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Coddled Apples
For this use the earlier apples, wipe and lay in a kettle, to each half peck adding three-fourths pint of brown sugar and a half pint of water. Cover and simmer till tender and sugared through.
A whole-apple confection rather than a sauce, and the whole point is that the fruit holds its shape. Keep the heat low and resist stirring.
- Half a peckA peck of apples runs 10-12 lb, so half a peck is roughly 5-6 lb, or 12-16 medium apples. Scale down freely: 1 1/2 lb of apples takes about 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1/4 cup water.
- Sugar and water by volumeThree-fourths pint of brown sugar is 1 1/2 cups; half a pint of water is 1 cup. Both are volume measures in the original.
- "Earlier apples"Summer varieties such as Gravenstein, Yellow Transparent or Duchess; these cook tender quickly, though many of them also break down readily, so watch them closely. A firm modern apple such as Gala or Braeburn will hold its shape better. McIntosh and similar soft-fleshed apples collapse into sauce.
- The kettleA "kettle" here is a large, heavy pot with a lid, not a teakettle. Give the apples room and handle them gently so the fruit underneath is not crushed.
- Do not boilThis is the hinge. At a rolling boil the skins split and the flesh slumps into sauce. Bring the liquid barely to a simmer and hold it there — bubbles just breaking at the edge.
- TimingWhole apples will likely need something in the range of 25-40 minutes depending on size and variety; test with a skewer at the thickest point. "Sugared through" appears to mean the syrup has penetrated the flesh, which takes longer than tenderness alone.
- Prep the original assumesWiping is all the instruction given, so these go in whole and unpeeled — the skin is what keeps them intact. Core them with an apple corer if you want.
- Yield and servingHalf a peck gives 12-16 servings. Serve warm or cold with the syrup spooned over, with cream or alongside pork or ham.
Coddling — a word often linked to the gentle egg treatment, though the origin is genuinely uncertain and has been traced variously to 'caudle' and to 'codling' — means cooking in liquid held below the boil, and it was one way to handle fruit that arrived before the good keeping apples of autumn. Early summer apples do not store: they bruise, go mealy within weeks, and cannot be barreled for winter, so a household with a bearing tree had to use them as they dropped. Books of this period were aimed at cooks working through gluts rather than shopping for a single dish. The brown sugar is doing double duty here, sweetening the fruit and drawing out enough juice to make a syrup.