Apple Tea
Roast very tart apples and pour over them boiling water, letting stand till the water is cold. This may be sweetened a little if sugar is permitted.
This is an infusion rather than a tea: roasted apple gives up its acid and aroma to hot water, and the result is strained and drunk cool. The original gives no quantities, so treat the proportions as a matter of taste.
- ProportionsNothing is specified. A workable starting point is two large apples to a pint of boiling water; more fruit gives a fuller, more cider-like flavour. The liquid should taste faintly tart and apple-scented, not watery.
- Roasting the applesThe original says only "roast," with no time or temperature. Baking them whole until soft and collapsing works; a moderate oven for something under an hour is a reasonable modern reading. Longer cooking and some browning will give a fuller-flavoured infusion.
- Choice of apple"Very tart" most likely points to a cooking apple — a Bramley, or in America a Greening or an early windfall. Granny Smith is a workable substitute; sweeter modern dessert apples such as Gala or Fuji will give a flatter drink.
- Skins and coresPrick or score the skins before roasting so they do not burst, then break the fruit up roughly, skins and all, before pouring on the water. The skin carries much of the colour and perfume.
- Standing and strainingCooling in the water is the infusion — reckon two to three hours. Strain through a fine sieve or muslin; pressing the pulp makes it cloudy, which does not harm the flavour but ruins the appearance.
- The sugar clause"If sugar is permitted" is a nod to the sickroom diet, where sweeteners were sometimes forbidden. Sweeten to taste while the water is still hot, or leave it plain and serve with a strip of lemon peel.
- Yield and keepingTwo apples and a pint of water make two generous glasses. Because it is never boiled after infusing, refrigerate it and drink within a day; apple juice ferments quickly at room temperature.
Apple tea belongs to a whole family of nineteenth-century invalid drinks — toast water, barley water, apple water, blackcurrant tea — served to the feverish when solid food was thought unwise. The phrase "if sugar is permitted" suggests the sickroom, where the cook might be working to a doctor's instructions and where sugar was sometimes ruled out. Whatever the reasoning behind roasting rather than stewing, the browning does deepen the flavour. Apples were cheap, keepable and widely promoted as healthful in this period, and a compiler gathering everything that could be done with the apple might well include sickroom beverages alongside the pies.