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Gateau De Pommes
Take half a pound of loaf sugar, put it into a saucepan with half a pint of water, and let it boil to a thick syrup. Put with it one pound of nicely-flavoured apples, weighed after they are pared and cored, and the thinly-sliced rind and juice of a small lemon. Stir the contents of the saucepan constantly, and boil until they are stiff. A tea-spoonful of isinglass may be added, if liked. Press the gateau into a damp mould, and when it is firm, turn it out, and serve with custard round it. Time, about three-quarters of an hour. Sufficient for a small mould. Probable cost, 9d., exclusive of the custard.
This is a moulded apple paste rather than a cake, and its success depends entirely on cooking the fruit down far enough to set on its own. A few Victorian conventions need translating.
- "Gateau" here is not a cakeNo flour, eggs or baking is involved. The result is a stiff apple paste turned out of a mould and served cold in a pool of custard, closer to a fruit cheese or a firm marmalade than to anything from a patisserie.
- Weights and volumesHalf a pound of loaf sugar is a generous cup of granulated sugar (about 225 g), which is what loaf sugar becomes once broken up. The half pint is an Imperial half pint, 10 fl oz, so use 1¼ cups of water.
- Choose an apple that collapsesThe one pound is weighed after paring and coring, so start with about 1¼ lb whole. A high-acid cooking apple such as Bramley or Granny Smith breaks down and carries enough pectin to set the paste; a firm eating apple will stay in lumps and never stiffen.
- IsinglassA gelatin refined from sturgeon and other fish swim bladders, once sold in leaf and shred form. It is a hedge against a slack set, not a requirement here; a teaspoon of powdered gelatin softened in cold water and stirred in off the heat does the same work.
- The lemon rindPare the rind in wide strips rather than fine shreds so it can be lifted out before moulding, unless you want strips of peel through the finished gateau. The juice also helps the pectin set.
- Judging "stiff"Stir constantly over moderate heat, as the mixture thickens it will spit and catch easily. It is done when a spoon dragged across the pan leaves a channel that holds its shape for a second or two, roughly the three-quarters of an hour given.
- A damp mould, not a greased oneRinsing the mould with cold water and leaving it wet is deliberate: the film of water lets the set paste release cleanly. Oil or butter would leave a greasy surface on a preserve like this. Chill several hours, or overnight, before turning out.
- YieldA pound of fruit will roughly fill a small mould of about a pint, enough for perhaps four servings with the custard. Any thin pouring custard suits it; the acidity of the apple needs the richness.
Victorian cookery books gave French names to plain English dishes as a matter of course, and gateau de pommes is a good example: the substance is boiled apple and sugar, a first cousin to apple marmalade and to the quince and apple "cheeses" that had been set in moulds in British kitchens for generations. The habit of listing a probable cost, here 9d. for the whole mould, is a reminder that the book was written for households running to a budget and often to a cook-general rather than a brigade, and that an entremets built from a pound of apples and half a pound of sugar was attractive precisely because it was cheap, keepable and looked considerably grander than its ingredients.