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Casserole of Apples
2 pounds of apples 2 ounces of vegetable gelatine 1 teaspoon of essence of ginger 6 ounces of sugar Dissolve the gelatine in a pint of cold water, add the sugar and a teaspoon of essence of ginger. Put in into a stewpan, and let it boil for five minutes, taking care it does not burn. Next, put the apples--pared, cored and quartered, into the liquid, to boil until soft but not broken. Take out the apples, and place them in the casserole mold rinsed out with cold water. Strain, and color the liquid with cochineal, and pour it over the apples. Serve cold.
A moulded apple jelly rather than anything baked — "casserole" here means the mould, and the dish is served cold. Two points need attention before you start: the gelling agent and its quantity.
- Vegetable gelatine is agarThe period term covers agar-agar (Japanese kanten), sold now as flakes, powder or bars. It is not interchangeable with gelatine by weight or by behaviour: agar sets far harder, sets at room temperature, and once set does not melt in a warm room.
- The quantity is far too highThe quantity looks far too high -- Two ounces (about 55 g) of modern agar powder to one pint of water would give a very stiff block. Agar sets firmly at well under 2 percent by weight -- for a pint, about 1 to 2 teaspoons of powder or 2 to 3 tablespoons of flakes. The original may refer to a bulkier or less refined product; treat the weight as unusable and go by modern package directions.
- Agar must boil, not merely dissolveDespite the instruction to dissolve it in cold water, agar hydrates only at a hard boil. Sprinkle it into the cold water, let it stand a few minutes, then bring it to a full rolling boil for the five minutes stated, stirring. Undissolved agar will never set.
- Essence of gingerAn alcoholic tincture of ginger from the chemist's shelf, strongly flavoured. A teaspoon of a modern ginger extract is comparable; failing that, simmer a few coins of fresh ginger in the syrup and strain them out.
- CochinealA red colouring made from dried scale insects, still sold as carmine or E120. It is not vegetarian, which is worth noting in a meatless book. Any red food colour, or a splash of pomegranate or hibiscus infusion, does the same work.
- Apple choice and doneness"Soft but not broken" rules out Bramleys and most cooking apples, which collapse. Use a firm variety — Braeburn, Granny Smith, Golden Delicious — and lift the quarters out with a slotted spoon as soon as a skewer meets no resistance, usually 6 to 10 minutes.
- UnmouldingRinsing the mould with cold water, as directed, helps the jelly release. Agar sets firm within about an hour at room temperature, and sooner in the refrigerator.
- YieldTwo pounds of apples with a pint of jelly will need a mould of at least two pints, and serves four to six, cut in wedges with cream or custard.
Agar-agar reached Western kitchens from Japan and China, where seaweed jellies (kanten) were long established, and it was seized on by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century vegetarian writers as the answer to a real problem: ordinary gelatine is boiled from the bones and hides of animals, which put every jelly, blancmange and moulded cream out of reach of a meatless household. "Vegetable gelatine" offered a way round it, so that the whole moulded-sweet repertoire could be reproduced without compromise. That the recipe then reaches for cochineal — an insect dye — shows how incompletely the implications of a meatless table had been worked out at the time. The dish itself is a plain apple compote given the shape and gloss of a company dessert, which is much of what moulds were for: they made cheap fruit look deliberate.