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Cinnamon Apples
6 medium apples, peeled and cored. 2 cups sugar. 2 bananas. 1 cup water. 1/2 cup candy cinnamon drops.
Make Sirup-When boiling put in apples stuffed with bananas two or three drops-then put into sirup, sprinkle rest of candy over apples. This makes a lovely pink color and gives a delightful flavor.
Put in crystal dish and serve cold with meat course. Ginger may be used instead of bananas.
A candy-poached apple meant as a relish for the meat course, not a dessert. The instructions are compressed to the point of confusion in places, so a few things need spelling out.
- The hinge: what the "drops" are"Candy cinnamon drops" are the small hard red cinnamon candies still sold as red hots or cinnamon imperials. They supply both the pink color and all the cinnamon flavor; ground cinnamon will not substitute, as it gives neither the dye nor the glassy syrup.
- "Two or three drops"The sentence is garbled. Read it as: stuff each cored apple with banana, tuck two or three cinnamon candies into the cavity with it, lower the apples into the boiling syrup, then scatter the remaining candies over them so they dissolve into the liquid.
- Syrup proportionsTwo cups sugar to one cup water is a heavy syrup, thick enough to glaze. Stir only until the sugar dissolves, then leave it alone; scraping the pan sides encourages crystallization.
- Poaching timeNo time is given. Simmer gently, uncovered, turning or basting the apples, for roughly 20 to 30 minutes, until a skewer slides in with slight resistance. Firm baking apples hold their shape best; a soft variety collapses into sauce in the sugar.
- Color takes patienceThe pink is superficial at first. The apples want to sit in the syrup off the heat as they cool so the color migrates inward; the recipe's direction to serve them cold at least allows for this, though it gives no reason.
- The ginger variation"Ginger" here most likely means preserved or crystallized ginger cut small, used as the stuffing in place of banana rather than powdered ginger; the recipe does not specify.
- Yield and place at tableSix apples, presumably one per person, though no yield is given. The "crystal dish" is a clear glass compote or bowl, chosen to show off the color; the recipe's own direction to serve with the meat course puts the apples in the slot cranberry sauce or spiced peaches occupy alongside pork, ham or poultry.
Mrs. Wilson's New Cook Book (1920) is associated with Mary A. Wilson, who wrote cookery material for the Ladies' Home Journal, and this page is a good specimen of the era's habit of treating sweetened fruit as a savory-course accompaniment: apples, peaches and crabapples were spiced, colored and set beside the roast in the same slot cranberry sauce still occupies. Poaching apples with red cinnamon candies was a familiar American shortcut of the period, the candy supplying spice, sweetness and color at once, and the technique survives in home kitchens as "cinnamon apples" to this day. The banana stuffing reflects the fact that imported bananas had become an everyday grocery item in American cities in the decades either side of 1900.