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Apple Sauce (Pare and quarter tart apples)
Pare and quarter tart apples. Put them in a saucepan with just enough water to keep them from burning; bring to a boil quickly and cook until the pieces are soft. Then press through a colander and add four tablespoons of sugar (or less) to each pint of apples.
If desired, cinnamon or grated nutmeg may be sprinkled over the top after the apple sauce is in the serving dish, or a little stick cinnamon or lemon peel may be cooked with the apples. Serve with goose or pork.
SUITABLE SAUCES TO SERVE WITH CERTAIN MEATS,
A plain stewed apple sauce with no fixed quantities — the proportions are given by volume of cooked fruit, which is unusual and worth reading carefully.
- Sugar by the pint of pulpFour tablespoons per pint of sieved apple is about 50 g per 475 ml, which is modest by modern standards and deliberately so: this is a savoury accompaniment. Add it after sieving and taste, since tart apples vary enormously in acidity.
- Which apples"Tart apples" here simply means a cooking apple sharp enough to need sugar; Bramley or McIntosh collapse readily, while a firmer variety such as Granny Smith holds its shape and takes longer to break down. Sweet dessert apples will need less sugar.
- Just enough waterHalf an inch in the bottom of the pan is plenty, and a lid does most of the work. Too much water gives a thin sauce that has to be reduced afterwards; the apples release a great deal of their own liquid within a few minutes.
- Cooking timeQuartered apples take roughly 12 to 20 minutes at a brisk simmer. Cook until they are falling apart, not merely tender, or the colander stage becomes hard labour.
- The colanderPressing through a colander is what makes this a sauce rather than stewed apple, and it also catches any stray core or peel. A food mill does the same job faster; a blender does not, since it aerates the pulp and pales the colour.
- Aromatics in or onA stick of cinnamon or a strip of lemon peel cooked with the fruit gives a rounder, less obtrusive flavour than ground spice sprinkled at table. Remove the stick and peel before sieving.
- YieldTwo pounds of apples gives somewhere around a pint to a pint and a half of finished sauce, depending how much water is used and how far it is cooked down; enough for about six as an accompaniment. It will keep several days refrigerated and freezes.
Apple sauce with pork and goose is one of the oldest surviving fat-and-acid pairings in English and Northern European cooking: the sharp fruit cuts through rich meat, and both apples and geese come to their best in autumn. The trailing line here — "SUITABLE SAUCES TO SERVE WITH CERTAIN MEATS" — is the beginning of exactly the sort of reference table such books traded in, matching mint to lamb, horseradish to beef and this sauce to pork.