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Stewed Apples and Dates
Where unripe, insipid apples are the only ones available they may be improved in flavour and nutritive value by adding a half cup or more of stoned, sliced dates to each quart of partially stewed apples. Simmer the fruit together about six minutes and set aside to cool. The grated rind of a lemon (which, if preferred, may be tied in a bit of linen) or the juice of a lemon, placed with the apples when first put on, pleasantly varies the flavour.
A frugal fix for flavourless apples, and still the fastest way to make cooking apples taste of something without reaching for sugar. The dates do the sweetening.
- QuantitiesThe recipe works from a quart (4 cups) of already partially stewed apples, which takes something like 2 lb of raw fruit before peeling and cooking down. To that, half a cup of pitted sliced dates, more if the apples are very sour.
- "Partially stewed"Start the apples in a heavy pan with a few tablespoons of water over low heat, covered, until they have begun to soften and release juice but still hold their shape, about 8-10 minutes. The dates go in after that, not at the start.
- Why the dates go in lateSix minutes is enough for them to swell and sweeten the syrup; the recipe gives no reason for the short time, but longer cooking tends to break sliced dates down and the sugar they release catches easily on the pan bottom.
- "Stoned"Pitted. Medjool dates give a caramel syrup; the drier Deglet Noor hold their slices better. Pre-chopped baking dates are usually dusted with flour or sugar to stop them clumping, which will cloud the liquid.
- The lemonRind tied in a bit of linen keeps the flavour without scattered zest; a tea infuser or a square of muslin does the same. The recipe treats rind and juice as alternatives, though they do different things — perfume from one, sharpness from the other.
- Yield and servingA quart of apples with the dates gives something over four cups, enough for four to six as a dessert or alongside cream, yoghurt or porridge. It will keep several days refrigerated.
This comes from a wave of cookery writing that treated fruit as a health food rather than a treat -- note the phrase "nutritive value", and the assumption that adding dates rather than white sugar is an improvement on both counts. Dates are generally said to have reached ordinary households in bulk during the late nineteenth century as dried imports from North Africa and the Middle East, cheap, keeping indefinitely, and sweet enough to stand in for sugar. The underlying problem is older than the book: before controlled storage and long-distance shipping, a cook faced whatever the local trees gave, and much of it was hard, sharp and undistinguished. Stewing it with something intensely sweet, sharpened with lemon, was one common remedy.