Fried Apples
Cut slices a half inch thick across the apple, removing neither skin nor core; or cut the apples in quarters, removing both skin and core.
Sauté them in butter or drippings until tender; serve with crisp bacon.
A two-line recipe that depends almost entirely on the apple you choose and how hot the pan is. Everything else is technique you already have.
- Apple choice is the hingeA firm, tart apple that holds its shape is essential — Granny Smith, Braeburn, Northern Spy, Winesap. A soft dessert apple will collapse into sauce in the pan, which is a different and much less interesting dish.
- The unpeeled ringsCutting straight across the apple leaves a small star of core and a few seeds in the middle of each slice. The recipe simply lets them be; if that bothers you, punch the centre out with a small round cutter and keep the ring intact.
- "Drippings"Rendered meat fat of whatever kind was in the pot; given that bacon is served alongside, bacon fat is an obvious choice. Fry the bacon first, lift it out, and cook the apples in what is left in the pan — though the recipe does not actually say to do this.
- Pan heatMedium, not high. The sugar in the apples browns fast and turns bitter over a hot burner. Roughly 4 to 6 minutes a side for half-inch rings, until the flesh gives to a knife tip but the slice still lifts in one piece.
- Single layerCrowding steams the apples instead of browning them. Cook in batches and hold the finished slices in a low oven if you are feeding several people.
- SweeteningNone is called for, and tart apples in bacon fat do not need it. A light dusting of sugar in the last minute will caramelise the surface if you want the dish sweeter.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities. Two medium apples and four or five rashers will serve two as a breakfast dish or as a side for pork.
Fried apples with bacon is old American farmhouse cooking of the plainest kind: two things the household already had, cooked in one pan, one of them in the fat of the other. Apples kept in a cellar through the winter and were used far more as a savoury vegetable than modern cooks tend to use them. They were served with pork, goose, sausage and ham throughout the nineteenth century, since the fruit's acidity cuts fat. The recipe leaves skin and core in place. Its filing here under "Candy" is hard to account for.