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Apple Solid
Simmer one and one half pounds lump sugar with three pounds sliced apples and juice and grated rind of three lemons, until thick, when pour into a wetted mould till cold. Turn out and serve with cream.
This is a stiff apple paste in the family of fruit cheeses, set by nothing but pectin and long reduction. The whole success of it lies in cooking the mixture far further than feels reasonable.
- Cook it much longer than you expect"Until thick" means until the mass pulls away from the bottom of the pan and a spoon drawn through leaves a track that holds for a second or two. On a low flame with three pounds of fruit this is commonly 45-90 minutes with frequent stirring. Stop early and it will slump when you turn it out.
- Lump sugarSimply refined white sugar sold in loaf or cube form; ordinary granulated sugar is the same thing. Use 1 1/2 lb, about 3 1/3 cups.
- Choose a tart, high-pectin appleBramley, Granny Smith or any firm cooker will break down and set. Modern dessert apples such as Gala or Fuji are low in acid and pectin and give a sweet sludge that never firms up. Peel and core before weighing the three pounds if you want a smooth solid; skins left in should be sieved out before moulding.
- The lemon is structuralThree lemons' worth of juice supplies the acid the pectin needs to gel, and the grated rind carries the flavour. Zest finely and add it with the juice at the start rather than at the end.
- A wetted mouldRinse the mould with cold water and do not dry it; the film of water keeps the paste from gripping the sides. Any 1-quart bowl, pudding basin or loaf tin will do. Chill several hours, or overnight, before turning out.
- Stirring and scorchingOnce the mixture thickens, sugar on the bottom of the pan burns quickly and taints the whole batch. Use a heavy-bottomed pan and a wooden spoon, and stir the corners as well as the middle.
- Yield and servingAbout 1 quart, serving six to eight in small portions -- it is rich and intensely sweet. The recipe says only "cream"; pouring cream, unwhipped, suits it and cuts the sugar, and a spoonful of thick yoghurt or creme fraiche does the same job.
- KeepingCovered in the refrigerator it will hold a week or more, firming as it goes. It is not a preserve in the sealed-jar sense and should not be treated as shelf-stable.
"Solid" was a nineteenth-century name for a dish stiff enough to be turned out of a mould -- close kin to the older fruit cheeses such as quince cheese (membrillo) and damson cheese, which were pressed into shallow boxes and sliced. The method is simply the marmalade principle taken further: fruit, sugar and acid boiled until the pectin sets hard. Apples were an obvious raw material in British and American households, cheap by the bushel each autumn and reliably high in pectin.