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NORMANDY PIPPINS, STEWED (another way)
Take half a pound of pippins. Soak them as in the last recipe; or, if time is a consideration, put them into a saucepan with as much cold water as will cover them, let them simmer very gently for twenty minutes, then drain the water from them, and let them get cold. Put them into a clean saucepan, with half a pint of water, a quarter of a pound of loaf sugar, the thin rind and strained juice of a lemon, a Seville orange, a St. Michael's orange, an inch of stick cinnamon, two cloves, and a glass of sherry. Simmer very gently until the pippins are quite tender but unbroken. Take them out, put them in a glass dish, boil the syrup quickly for ten minutes, and strain it over the fruit. Devonshire cream, or a little ordinary thick cream, is a great improvement to this dish. Serve cold. One or two drops of prepared cochineal will improve the colour. Time, about three hours to stew the pippins. Probable cost, 10d. per pound. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A Victorian compote of dried apples poached in spiced citrus syrup. The pantry items are the obstacle, not the technique.
- Normandy pippins are dried applesNot fresh fruit: these are whole dried apples sold by the pound at Victorian grocers. Dried apple rings are the nearest current equivalent, though they are cut thinner and will soften far faster than the whole fruit the recipe assumes.
- The soaking is the hingeThe point of the soak directed in the preceding recipe (or the twenty-minute simmer and cooling given here as the quick alternative) is to rehydrate the fruit before sugar enters the pan. Sugar syrup applied to under-soaked apples tends to firm the outside and leave the centre leathery.
- Imperial measuresHalf a pint is 10 fl oz, not 8. A glass of sherry in this period means roughly 2 to 2 1/2 fl oz. Half a pound of dried apples is a substantial quantity once rehydrated.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in a hard cone and broken up as needed. Ordinary granulated or caster sugar is the same thing; 4 oz is about half a cup.
- The two orangesA Seville is the bitter marmalade orange, available fresh only in mid-winter; bottled Seville juice or a squeeze of lemon plus a little grapefruit approximates the sharpness. A St. Michael's is a sweet orange shipped from the Azores, so an ordinary eating orange stands in.
- Cooking timeThe stated three hours is for whole hard dried apples over a low Victorian range. Modern dried rings, gently simmered, will be tender in 20 to 40 minutes. Cook to the description rather than the clock: quite tender but unbroken.
- Reducing the syrupLift the fruit out first, as instructed, or the ten-minute hard boil will collapse it. Strain the syrup hot over the apples and let the dish cool together so the fruit absorbs it.
- Cochineal and creamPrepared cochineal was a liquid carmine colouring, still sold as a natural red food colour; it is optional and does nothing for flavour. Devonshire cream means clotted cream.
- YieldFive or six as written, served cold in a glass dish.
"Normandy pippins" was a trade name in nineteenth-century British groceries for whole dried dessert apples, sold as a winter store cupboard fruit; the name gestured at French orchards. Cassell's places the dish among stewed fruits because that is what a dried apple was for: a way of putting apple on the table in February, when the fresh crop was gone or wanted for keeping. The syrup here, with its Seville and sweet orange, stick cinnamon, cloves and sherry, can be read as the flavouring of mincemeat and Christmas cookery applied to plain fruit, and the addition of Devonshire cream suggests a dinner sweet rather than a nursery dish. The two named oranges are a small piece of evidence about Victorian shopping: the bitter fruit and the sweet fruit did different jobs, and the recipe calls for both.