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To Dry Apples, Also to Pack
Extremely acid fruit is best for retaining flavour when dried. Cut in slices, string or merely place on shallow trays, drying in fruit-dryer, in cool oven or sun. If dried in the sun, heat over steam before putting away to destroy any possible insect eggs, and while drying cover with mosquito netting to protect from insects. In packing apples away for winter keeping or shipping, if elder blossoms are placed between layers a delicate flavour is given.
A method rather than a formula, and it works as well now as it did then. The main adjustments are the drying appliance and the pasteurising step.
- Choose the right applesThe instruction to use "extremely acid fruit" is sound: tart varieties such as Bramley, Granny Smith or Northern Spy keep a recognisable apple flavour after drying, while sweet dessert apples turn flat and one-dimensional. Slice 1/4 inch thick and even, or the thin pieces scorch before the thick ones are dry.
- "Cool oven" means 135-150FDrying temperature -- Modern guidance for drying apples is 135-150F, and an electric dehydrator set to 135F does the job; note this is well below what period cookbooks usually meant by a "cool oven" (nearer 200-250F), so treat the book's phrase as "as low as your oven will go". In an oven, the lowest setting is usually still too hot, so prop the door open an inch and expect 6-12 hours. Rings are done when leathery and pliable with no beads of moisture when torn.
- Sun drying is still viable but slowIt needs several consecutive days of dry heat above about 85F with low humidity; in a damp climate the slices will mould before they dry. Bring the trays indoors overnight so dew does not undo the day's work.
- The steam step is pasteurisingThis is the hinge of the whole method for sun-dried fruit. The recipe gives no timing; current guidance is to heat the finished slices in a 160F oven for about 30 minutes (or hold them over steam until thoroughly heated through) to kill insect eggs picked up outdoors; skip it and a sealed jar can hatch in the pantry. Fruit dried in an enclosed dehydrator does not need it.
- Mosquito nettingAny fine food-safe mesh or a purpose-made drying screen does the job. Keep the netting raised off the fruit on a frame rather than lying on it, so air still moves.
- Conditioning and storageLoosely pack the cooled slices in a jar for a week, shaking daily; if condensation appears, the fruit needs more drying. Then seal airtight and keep dark. Untreated slices brown as they dry, which is cosmetic; a dip in lemon water or a light sulphite treatment prevents it.
- The elder blossom trickThis applies to whole fresh apples in storage, not to the dried slices. Elderflower heads are edible and aromatic, but the green stems and leaves are not, so strip the florets from the stalks. Use them dry, and check the layers periodically, since any damp plant matter among stored apples invites rot.
- YieldRoughly 1 lb of dried rings from 8 lb of fresh apples. A peck, a common retail measure for apples, is about 10-12 lb.
Dried apples were the default winter fruit in American and British farm households well before canning became cheap, and "snits" or "schnitz" — strung slices hung near the stove or in the rafters — turn up in Pennsylvania German cooking as the base for pies, sauces and dumplings. The passage's mixture of concerns — appliance, oven and open sun in one breath — is characteristic of fruit-drying instructions from the period in which commercial evaporated-apple works and small domestic fruit-dryers were both in circulation. The elder blossom note belongs to an older strand of household lore, the same impulse that packed quinces among stored linen or laid bay leaves in the flour bin; elderflower does carry a strong muscat-like aroma, though the claim that it perfumes stored apples is traditional rather than tested.