“We found the Grosvenor another Gresham. However, as we wanted to stop at a swell hotel, we concluded--so long as we were there--to remain; but after a few days we found the cuisine "highly respectable;" that is, for dinner one could get roast--either beef or mutton. As for vegetables, we were strictly limited to turnips, cauliflowers, cabbage and potatoes, and, for dessert, the famous apple tart of England, more deadly even than our mince pie.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
1233. INGREDIENTS.--Puff-paste No. 1205 or 1206, apples; to every lb. of unpared apples allow 2 oz. of moist sugar, 1/2 teaspoonful of finely-minced lemon-peel, 1 tablespoonful of lemon-juice. _Mode_.--Make 1/2 lb. of puff-paste by either of the above-named recipes, place a border of it round the edge of a pie-dish, and fill it with apples pared, cored, and cut into slices; sweeten with moist sugar, add the lemon-peel and juice, and 2 or 3 tablespoonfuls of water; cover with crust, cut it evenly round close to the edge of the pie-dish, and bake in a hot oven from 1/2 to 3/4 hour, or rather longer, should the pie be very large. When it is three-parts done, take it out of the oven, put the white of an egg on a plate, and, with the blade of a knife, whisk it to a froth; brush the pie over with this, then sprinkle upon it some sifted sugar, and then a few drops of water.
Sources: The passage is from Austin Bidwell, Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Beeton, The Book of Household Management of 1861, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — forest cloth, pear stamp.