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Apple Sauce
Early apples or unripe ones are suitable for apple sauce. Pare and slice, and drop into cold water. This preserves the color. Cook in a nickel saucepan with sufficient water to keep from burning. Cover the pan with a close lid and do not let any of the steam escape. Shake every ten minutes to get even steaming. At the end of a half hour, if the apples are soft, rub through a colander. Add sugar to taste, and a lump of butter to each quart.
To keep it hot put into a covered dish. If desired to serve cold, put on ice, first adding a little cinnamon or nutmeg.
A plain stovetop apple sauce that relies on trapped steam rather than added liquid. The technique still works; only a few details need translating.
- The hinge: keep the lid shutThe apples cook largely in their own steam, with only enough water to keep them from burning. Lifting the lid to stir lets that steam out and invites scorching, which is why the original tells you to shake the pan instead.
- "Nickel saucepan"Nickel-plated ware was recommended because bare iron and unlined copper discolour acidic fruit. Any stainless steel or enamelled pan does the same job; avoid uncoated cast iron and aluminium.
- Cold water for colourDropping the slices into cold water slows enzymatic browning. A splash of lemon juice in the water works better still, and adds a little brightness to a sauce made from bland early apples.
- TimingHalf an hour is right for firm, underripe apples in thick slices. Ripe supermarket apples cut small will collapse in 15 to 20 minutes, so check earlier rather than letting them catch.
- Butter quantity"A lump of butter to each quart" is an undefined measure; a tablespoon or so per quart, stirred in while hot, is a reasonable reading. It rounds out the sharpness of green fruit.
- SievingRubbing through a colander breaks the softened apples down and catches any stray bits of core. For a chunky sauce, mash in the pan with a fork or potato masher instead.
- YieldAbout 3 lb of apples gives roughly a quart, enough for six to eight servings as a side dish.
- Keeping itThis is fresh sauce with no preservative. Refrigerate and use within four or five days; it also freezes well. It is not shelf-stable without proper canning.
Apple sauce earned its place in American cookery as much for thrift as for taste: windfalls and early, hard, sour apples that were useless for keeping or for pies could be cooked down into something worth eating, and green fruit brings its own pectin and acidity. The pairing with pork and goose is old on both sides of the Atlantic, generally explained as acid cutting fat. The insistence on a nickel pan suggests a period when writers on cookery were attentive to how cookware affected food, warning readers away from unlined copper and bare iron for anything acidic. Note too that the sauce is served either hot from a covered dish or chilled on ice with cinnamon or nutmeg.