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Spiced Apples
To improve immature, insipid apples peel them thin and core, and to four pounds allow two pounds of sugar, onequarter ounce each of nutmeg and cloves and one-half ounce stick cinnamon. Place the sugar and spices in a pint of vinegar and let come to a boil, when drop in the whole apples and cook carefully till tender enough to be pierced with a broom straw. Remove and pour the syrup over them. These may be served as a sauce or kept along time in jars. (See also Sweet Apple Pickle.)
A sweet-sour vinegar syrup used to rescue hard, underripe apples. The whole point is to keep the fruit whole, so gentle heat and a shallow pan matter more than anything else.
- The hinge: barely a simmerWhole peeled apples will collapse the moment the syrup boils hard. Hold it at a bare simmer and turn or baste the fruit rather than stirring, and stop the instant a skewer (the modern broom straw) slides in with slight resistance. Usually 10-25 minutes depending on variety and size.
- Liquid looks short, and isA pint of vinegar to four pounds of apples will not cover the fruit. Use a wide pan so the apples sit in one layer, cover it, and expect the apples to give up juice and the level to rise as they cook. Cook in two batches rather than stacking them.
- Vinegar strengthModern cider vinegar at about 5 percent acidity is a reasonable stand-in; anything sold as "reduced acidity" or a mellow artisan vinegar will taste flat here. The recipe does not specify which vinegar, but cider vinegar suits apples better than white.
- Whole spices, roughlyA quarter ounce of nutmeg is about one whole nutmeg, cracked; a quarter ounce of cloves is around three teaspoons whole; half an ounce of stick cinnamon is four or so short sticks. Tie them in a cloth or the cloves will lodge in the fruit and the syrup will go muddy.
- Which applesThe recipe is written for immature windfalls, but it works with any firm, tart cooking apple. Avoid anything that bakes fluffy, such as McIntosh, which will disintegrate before it takes on the spice.
- Sugar ratioTwo pounds of sugar to four pounds of fruit is a preserving quantity, not a seasoning quantity. Cutting it makes a pleasant compote but weakens the keeping quality the last line depends on, though the vinegar does part of that work too.
- Storage"Kept a long time in jars" implies something like the old open-kettle method; the recipe gives no sealing instructions, and no such method is now considered a reliable seal. Treat this as a refrigerator preserve, good for a few weeks in a covered jar. For shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested boiling-water-bath recipe for spiced apples.
- Yield and servingFour pounds of apples with their syrup gives roughly two to three quarts. Serve cold or barely warm alongside pork, ham, goose or cold cuts; a few apples with a spoonful of syrup is a portion.
Spiced apples belong to the broad family of sweet-sour fruit pickles that ran through nineteenth-century Anglo-American cooking, where "sauce" could mean a condiment set beside meat rather than something poured over pudding. What marks this version as a thrift recipe is the opening line: it is aimed squarely at immature, insipid fruit, the small hard windfalls and thinnings that would not keep in the cellar and were not worth a pie. Sugar and spice were the correction, and the broom straw, pulled from the kitchen broom, was a common doneness test in nineteenth-century American recipes.