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Rosy Apples
1 C sugar. 1 C water. Mrs. F. H. Steele, Kewanee, Ill. 2 T cinnamon candy 6 Jonathan apples Make a syrup of sugar, water and candies. Pare and core apples. Drop in syrup and cook until tender and well colored. May be served with roast pork or ham, or may be served as a salad.
A church-supper standby that assumes you already know the proportions for a poaching syrup. The recipe gives you the flavoring and the fruit and leaves the rest to judgment.
- The missing syrupNo quantities are given for sugar and water, and any conversion would be invention. A workable poaching syrup for six apples is on the order of a cup of sugar to two cups of water; you want enough liquid to come at least halfway up the fruit in a snug pan.
- T means tablespoonTwo tablespoons of cinnamon candy is what gives both the heat and the red color. These are the small hard "red hots" or cinnamon imperials, not cinnamon-flavored soft candy, which will not dissolve cleanly or color the syrup.
- Dissolve before the apples go inThe candies need to melt completely into the simmering syrup first. Drop the apples into an unfinished syrup and you get gritty, unevenly tinted fruit with a hard sugar layer stuck to the pan bottom.
- Jonathans and stand-insJonathan is a tart apple of New York origin that became a Midwest orchard staple. Its flesh is on the tender side, so it wants gentle heat if it is to keep its shape. Braeburn, Winesap or Empire can stand in; McIntosh and most Galas tend to collapse into sauce.
- Whole apples, coredThe apples are pared and cored but left whole, so they need gentle heat and turning or basting every few minutes to color evenly. Figure 20 to 30 minutes at a bare simmer; a paring knife should slide in with light resistance, not fall through.
- Let them cool in the syrupThe red penetrates further and the apples firm up slightly as they cool in the liquid. Lifting them out hot gives a thin ring of color and a soft center.
- Yield and servingSix apples, one per person. As a garnish for pork or ham they go on the platter at room temperature; as a salad they are set on lettuce, sometimes with the cavity filled with cream cheese or a spoonful of the reduced syrup.
Cinnamon-candy apples are often associated with an American mid-century moment, when hard cinnamon imperials were cheap, shelf-stable and did double duty as flavoring and food coloring. Recipes for spiced apple rings, cinnamon crabapples and "rosy" or "candied" apples turn up constantly in community cookbooks of the period, filed variously under salads, relishes and accompaniments, because they served the same purpose as a pickle: a sharp, bright accompaniment to roast pork or baked ham. The Jonathan apple is a Northeastern variety that became a Midwest orchard mainstay, and its firm, acidic flesh is exactly what this treatment wants. That the contributor is credited by married name and hometown is standard for a community fundraising cookbook, where the list of names was part of the point.