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SYRUP OF APPLES (a German recipe)
Peel a dozen fine rennets, cut them into slices as thin as possible, put them into a jar with a pound and a half of sugar and six spoonfuls of water; put the lid on, and place it in a bain-marie for two hours, keeping the water always boiling: be careful from time to time to move the jar, but do not take it out of the water, because by coming into the cold air it might crack. When it has boiled two hours let the fire go out, and leave the jar in the bain-marie till nearly cold. When the juice is almost cold, flavour it with lemon-juice, adding a spoonful of essence of lemon, a spoonful of essence of cinnamon, orange-flower water, or anything else which may be preferred. If it is not quite clear, let it stand for two or three hours more, then pour it gently into bottles, taking great care not to disturb the sediment at the bottom.
A slow extraction rather than a boiled syrup: the apples give up their juice into the sugar in a sealed jar held at just under boiling point, so the flavour stays fresh and the colour pale. Nothing here is difficult, but two or three of the terms have shifted.
- Rennets"Rennet" is the old English spelling of reinette, a family of firm, aromatic dessert apples. Cox's Orange Pippin, Braeburn or any dense, fragrant apple will do; avoid Red Delicious and other mealy varieties, which yield little juice and no perfume.
- SpoonfulsThe book does not specify. In cookery of this period a bare "spoonful" is commonly taken to mean a tablespoon. Six tablespoons of water is enough to start the sugar dissolving; the apples supply the rest.
- Bain-marieA deep pan of water on the stove, not the oven. Stand the jar on a folded cloth or a trivet so it is not in direct contact with the base, keep the water at the steady boil the recipe calls for through the full two hours, and top it up with boiling water as it evaporates.
- The jarUse a heatproof preserving jar with the lid resting on rather than clamped down, so steam is not trapped under pressure. The warning against lifting it into cold air is sound: old jars crack from thermal shock, and modern ones can too.
- EssencesVictorian essence of lemon and essence of cinnamon are concentrated oils in alcohol, far stronger than a modern extract used by the spoonful. Add a few drops at a time and taste; a spoonful of either would make the syrup medicinal. Orange-flower water, by contrast, is used at about the strength the recipe implies.
- Yield and keepingYields a few cups of syrup, depending on how juicy the apples are. It is not a sealed preserve, so bottle it, refrigerate, and use within a few weeks. It is good over rice pudding, in soda water, or brushed on a fruit tart.
Apple syrup belongs to a broad northern European tradition of turning a heavy autumn crop into something bottled and keepable, best known in the Rhineland as Apfelkraut, where the juice is boiled down hard to a near-black spread. This version is the refined, drawing-room end of the same idea: no boiling down at all, just a gentle two-hour extraction that keeps the syrup pale and the apple's own scent intact, then a lemon or cinnamon or orange-flower flavouring chosen to taste. Late-Victorian household books treated fruit syrups as kitchen stock rather than a finished dish, kept on hand to sweeten puddings, glaze pastry, or mix with water for an invalid's drink. The reliance on reinette apples, and the assumption the cook knows what a bain-marie is, might suggest a compiler working from Continental sources, though that is only an inference; the parenthetical "a German recipe" points the same way.