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Gateau of Mixed Fruits
Put one pound of small green apples, pared and cored, into a saucepan, with a little water to prevent burning. Boil until the apples are reduced to pulp, then add their weight in sugar, and boil for a few minutes longer. Pour in half a pint of red currant juice, and half a pint of raspberry, or any other fruit juice that may be liked and at hand. A little isinglass or gelatine may be added, to assist in stiffening. Pour the gateau into a damped mould, and serve in a glass dish with custard. Time, nearly one hour. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for a pint mould.
A moulded fruit paste rather than a cake: hard green apples cooked to a stiff pulp, sweetened, slackened with berry juice and set in a mould. The whole thing lives or dies on how much water you drive off before it goes into the mould.
- Reduce, then reduce againAfter the currant and raspberry juice go in, the mixture is far too loose to unmould. Keep it over heat, stirring, until it is thick enough to hold the mark of the spoon for a second or two; the gelatine is described as an assistance, not the main setting agent.
- "Gateau" here is not a cakeVictorian English cookery books often use the word for a shaped or moulded sweet as well as for baked cakes. In this recipe nothing is baked and there is no batter or pastry.
- Half a pintImperial measure, so 10 fl oz or about 1¼ US cups. Both juices together come to a pint against one pound of apple pulp, which is why the boiling-down matters.
- Small green applesUnripe cooking apples were wanted for their acidity and high pectin. A Bramley or windfall crab apples come closest; a firm green eating apple such as Granny Smith has less pectin and acid, and a sweet dessert apple will give a much weaker set.
- IsinglassA gelatine made from sturgeon swim bladders, sold in leaf and shred form through the nineteenth century and effectively gone from domestic use. Plain leaf or powdered gelatine replaces it directly, but the original gives no quantity at all — start at the level your gelatine's packet recommends for a soft-set pint jelly and expect to judge by eye.
- Weight in sugarThe text says the apples' weight, i.e. the pound of pared and cored fruit; one pound of apples yields well under a pound of pulp once cooked down, so matching the sugar to the reduced pan contents instead will give a less sweet result. Either reading is workable, but the choice is yours, not the book's.
- Damped mouldWetting the mould with cold water is what allows the set gateau to slide out. Chill it several hours, longer than the stated "nearly one hour," which covers cooking only.
- Yield and servingA pint mould, so four small portions. The recipe specifies only that it be served in a glass dish with custard, and gives no custard recipe or method of arranging it.
- CostTenpence in pre-decimal money, quoted because Cassell's priced almost every dish for household budgeting.
Cassell's belongs to the great age of the moulded English sweet, when a copper or earthenware mould was standard equipment. This particular formula sits between two older traditions: the fruit cheese, a stiff paste of apple or quince boiled with its weight in sugar and kept for months, and the fashionable clear jelly set with isinglass. Green apples were the obvious base because commercial pectin was not yet available to the domestic cook — the setting power had to come from the fruit itself, which is why unripe apples, currants and quinces turn up again and again as the backbone of Victorian jellies. Red currant and raspberry were among the standard soft fruits of an English kitchen garden, and they supplied the colour that plain apple pulp lacks. Isinglass, imported chiefly from Russia and made from sturgeon bladders, was expensive, and here it is used only to help along a set the fruit has largely achieved on its own.