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Apples in Jelly
5 apples. 1 1/2 cups sugar. 1 1/2 cups water. 1/2 cup raisins. 1 15-cent bottle maraschino cherries. 2 tablespoons gelatin soaked in 1/2 cup water. Juice 1 lemon.
Put on sugar with water, cook into sirup. Peel and core five apples, stuff with raisins and cherries. Place in sirup and cook until tender; take out carefully and place on dish an inch deep on sides. Add lemon and cherry juice to sirup, also gelatin. When thoroughly dissolved and nearly cool, pour around and over apples. Color any shade with color paste. Cut out apples with round cutter if it is to be served as individuals. They are pretty served in crystal dish with meat course.
A molded fruit garnish meant to go on the table beside a roast, not as dessert. The one thing that decides success is the apples: they must hold their shape whole through poaching, or the jelly sets around five collapsed heaps.
- Choose a firm appleUse a variety that keeps its shape when cooked — Granny Smith, Braeburn, Northern Spy, Golden Delicious. Poach at a bare simmer and start testing with a skewer at 12 minutes; most whole peeled apples are tender in 15 to 25 minutes depending on size.
- The gelatin2 tablespoons is 6 teaspoons, roughly 2 2/3 standard 1/4-oz envelopes. Soak it in the half cup of cold water for 5 minutes to bloom, then stir into the hot syrup off the heat. That quantity should set about 2 1/2 to 3 cups of liquid firmly.
- The cherry bottleA 15-cent bottle would have been a small one; a 4 to 6 oz jar, about 1/2 to 3/4 cup drained, is a reasonable guess. The recipe returns the juice from the jar to the syrup, where it adds a little sweetness and tint.
- Color pasteWilson means the concentrated coloring pastes sold to home cooks and confectioners. Modern gel food coloring is the nearest equivalent; a drop or two is plenty, since the cherry syrup already tints the jelly pink.
- The dish"A dish an inch deep on sides" is a rimmed platter or shallow baking dish that will hold the jelly around the apples. Chill at least 4 hours, and longer if the kitchen is warm.
- "Cut out apples with round cutter"The line is terse; the plain reading is that once the jelly has set around the apples, each one is stamped out of it with a round cutter for individual service. Wipe the cutter in hot water between cuts for clean edges.
- Yield and servingFive apples, five servings. The recipe itself says they are "pretty served in crystal dish with meat course," so it functions as a cold accompaniment to roast meat, brought out with it rather than after.
Mrs. Wilson's New Cook Book belongs to the moment when American home cooks had domesticated powdered gelatin, and the result was a flood of molded fruit and vegetable dishes. Mary A. Wilson wrote from Philadelphia and had done wartime food-conservation work, and her books share the period's fondness for a dish that looked expensive, held its shape on a crystal dish, and could be made a day ahead. The maraschino cherries are their own small history: the name comes from marasca cherries preserved in maraschino liqueur, a Dalmatian product, but the American article by 1920 was a brined, sweetened, dyed cherry with no liquor in it at all.