William E Shay
NUT FRAPPE
1/2 envelope Knox Sparkling 1 cup cream Gelatine 1/4 cup cold water 1/2 cup sugar 3/4 cup milk White of 1 egg 1 cup chopped nuts 1 cup cooked pineapple and strawberries Soak gelatine in the cold water five minutes and dissolve over hot water. Add dissolved gelatine to cream, milk and sugar and stir in beaten white ofegg. When cold, add the pineapple and strawberries which have been chopped in small pieces, also the chopped nuts. Serve ice cold in sherbet glasses. 107 William. E. Shay.
Campbell
MARSHMALLOW APPLE PIE
is very dainty. It is made by filling a pastry-lined pan with well-flavored apples, pared, cored, and cut in eighths. These are sprinkled thickly with sugar and a few spoonfuls of water poured over them. The pie is baked till the apples are tender, then spread with halved fresh marshmallows and returned to the oven to brown delicately.
Two items sit on this page: a gelatine-set nut frappé and a short prose method for marshmallow apple pie. The frappé is never heated after the egg white goes in, which is where it fails for a modern kitchen.
- Why the cautionThe beaten white of one egg is folded into a cold gelatine mixture and served ice cold, so it is eaten raw. Raw shell egg carries a Salmonella risk that chilling does not reduce, and this dessert has no cooking step at any point. Use a current recipe for an uncooked gelatine mousse if you want this style of dish.
- Knox Sparkling GelatineAn envelope of granulated gelatine is about 1/4 oz, roughly 2 1/4 to 2 1/2 teaspoons, so half an envelope is a little over a teaspoon. "Sparkling" was a Knox brand designation for the clear granulated product, not a carbonated one.
- Cooked, not fresh, pineappleThe instruction to use cooked pineapple is doing real work. Fresh pineapple contains bromelain, a protease that breaks down gelatine and will leave the mixture permanently slack; heating destroys it. Canned pineapple has already been heat-treated and behaves the same way as the cooked fruit here.
- Dissolving the gelatineSoaking in cold water then melting over hot water, rather than boiling, is still the correct method. Add the melted gelatine to the cream and milk while both are near room temperature, or the gelatine will set in threads on contact with cold dairy.
- What frappé meantWhat frappe meant -- In American cookbooks of this period frappe usually meant a chilled or part-frozen sweet or drink. This one is soft-set rather than frozen, closer to a whip than a jelly, and the recipe accordingly calls for sherbet glasses rather than a mould.
- YieldRoughly three cups of mixture before the fruit and nuts go in, which fills four to six sherbet glasses.
- Marshmallow apple pie temperaturesNo oven heat or timing is given. A single-crust apple pie of this kind suits a hot oven, in the region of 425F, baked until the fruit is tender; the marshmallows then need only a few minutes at the same heat, watched closely, since they scorch soon after they colour.
- Fresh marshmallows"Halved fresh marshmallows" means the large soft confection cut through the middle, not miniatures. Older marshmallows dry out and will not slump into a sheet over the fruit.
This page comes from a genre of fundraising cookbook that flourished in the 1910s and 1920s, in which stage and screen performers lent their names to recipes collected for a charity or theatrical fund. William E. Shay was a silent-film and stage actor of that era, and the contribution here is typical of what such books printed: a modest, fashionable, easily assembled dessert rather than anything a professional kitchen would produce. The gelatine itself points to the same commercial world. Charles B. Knox's company, founded in 1890, which had made granulated gelatine a pantry staple in the United States, published recipe pamphlets heavily, and the brand name appearing inside the ingredient list is the ordinary house style of the period. The marshmallow-topped apple pie appended below reflects an enthusiasm for marshmallows as a browning topping, used on pies, sweet potatoes and baked fruit alike once mass-produced marshmallows became cheap.