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Compotes, Etc., of Fruit: Pommes
Pommes au beurre, or à la Parisienne, are apples filled with butter and sugar, and baked.
Covered with apricot marmalade they are à la Portugaise. Filled with an almond paste they are à la Comtesse. au riz en timbale-a shell of paste filled with rice, and stewed apples in the centre; covered with apricot marmalade. au riz meringué are stewed, and served in a border of rice with custard over them, and the whole covered with meringue mixture.
Dressed in this way without the rice they are Pommes meringuées.
Pommes à la Jubilé are stewed whole, filled with strawberry jam and covered with whipped cream. à la Frangipane-slices of apples with jam, covered with custard; baked in a dish lined with paste. à la Polonaise are dressed in an open tart, covered with orange marmalade and crushed macaroons.
Miroton de pommes-stewed apples with melted currant jelly and wine; garnished with dried cherries.
Gâteau, or Pain, de pommes à la crème is a mould of apple marmalade, served with a custard sauce; aux abricots, it is covered with apricot marmalade; à la Russe, it has whipped cream in the centre, and melted currant jelly round.
Croquettes de pommes are pieces of apple marmalade, breadcrumbed and fried.
Meringue de pommes à la Portugaise-a round shell of paste filled with apple marmalade, with half apples on the top, and a well of custard in the centre; spread with orange marmalade, and covered with meringue mixture.
Chartreuse de pommes is a mould ornamentally lined with slices of apples, coloured pink and yellow, and filled with apple marmalade.
Fifteen named apple dishes, all built from three or four parts: stewed apples, apple marmalade, a border or mould of rice, and a pastry shell. Once you see the parts the page stops being a list and becomes a set of combinations.
- Apple marmalade is apple pasteNot jam and not sauce. Apples cooked down with sugar until stiff enough to hold a shape in a mould or fill a tart without weeping. This is the one preparation you have to make before most of the page is available to you.
- Rice as structureA border or mould of rice, cooked in milk until it sets firm, does the job a sponge or a pastry case would do now. Gâteau de riz, au riz en timbale, au riz meringué: the rice is there to stand up, not for flavour.
- Pink and yellow applesChartreuse de pommes lines a mould with apple slices coloured pink and yellow. The colour came from the dye bottle. If you want the effect, poach the slices in cranberry or hibiscus liquid for pink and in a saffron or turmeric syrup for yellow, or leave them pale.
- A well of custardSeveral of these are assemblies with a hollow in the middle filled at the last moment. The custard is a thin pouring one, not a set one, and it has to go in at the table or the structure softens under it.
- Miroton is the one to cookMiroton de pommes is stewed apple with melted currant jelly and wine poured over, dried cherries round the edge. It is the plainest thing on the page, it takes twenty minutes, and it is better than most of what surrounds it.
Apples were the fruit a northern household had in quantity and had for months, laid out on slatted shelves in a cold room, looked over every week, used before they turned. A chapter that can name fifteen apple dishes is a chapter written for February, when the stored fruit was most of what there was and the cook had to keep the table from noticing. The pastry, the rice, the meringue and the marmalades are all there so that one ingredient can arrive looking like something else.