Apple Salad
6 apples 4 tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar 1/4 teaspoonful of cinnamon 1 gill of sherry Pare, core and cut the apples into very thin slices. Put a layer of these slices in the bottom of a glass dish, sprinkle them with the sugar, and a little cinnamon, then another layer of apples, and so continue until all is used. Pour the wine over, and stand away in a cold place for one hour, and it is ready to use.
A macerated apple dish rather than a salad in the modern sense — no greens, no dressing, just fruit, sugar, spice and fortified wine. It takes ten minutes of knife work and an hour of waiting.
- A gill of sherryA gill is half a cup, 4 fluid ounces. For six apples that is a generous soak; a dry or medium sherry balances the sugar better than a sweet or cream style.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term usually means finely ground granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Superfine (caster) sugar is the closest match and dissolves into the wine without clouding it.
- Choose a firm appleVery thin slices sitting an hour in wine will collapse if the apple is soft. A crisp variety that holds its shape — Granny Smith, Braeburn, Pink Lady — is what this needs.
- Slice thin and stop the browningA mandoline gives the near-translucent slices the recipe assumes. Toss the slices with a little lemon juice as you go, or work fast and get them under the sugar, or the top layer will be brown before the wine goes on.
- The hour is not optionalThe sugar draws juice from the apples, which thins the sherry into a light syrup. Cut it short and you have raw apple in wine; left much longer than the specified hour the slices will begin to soften.
- "A cold place"The refrigerator. Serve it chilled, straight from the glass dish it was layered in — the layering is meant to be seen.
- YieldSix apples serves six to eight as a light course or dessert. It contains uncooked alcohol throughout, so it is not a dish to put in front of children.
Calling it a salad reflects older usage, in which a salad could be any cold assembled dish dressed with something acid or spirituous rather than specifically a leafy one — sweet fruit salads sat comfortably in the same chapter as lobster and lettuce. Sherry was a common fortified wine in the American and British kitchen of the period, kept on hand for trifles, jellies and soups.