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Maryland Apple Cake
2 heaping quarts of apples in quarters. 3/4 pound of sugar--more with sour apples. 3/4 pound of best fresh butter. 2 teaspoonfuls of ground cinnamon. 2 pounds of sweet paste for the crust.
For the last named article, "home folks" use common cookie dough, hotel cooks use sweet tart paste because it is easier to bake without burning. Break the butter in bits in two frying-pans, set on the range, and when melted put in the apples (pared and cored of course) and fry them slowly and carefully till done. Put in the sugar and ground cinnamon and cook a little longer. The apples are expected to look brown.
Butter a baking-pan and line it with the sweet paste rolled out thin; put in the apples and cover with a thin crust. Bake as long as you can without scorching--about three-quarters of an hour. Turn the cake out, upside down on a board or sheet of tin and cut it in blocks or squares to serve. Thick cream cold is the best sauce.
Common cookie dough for the preceding is made with: 1/2 pound of sugar. 1/4 pound of butter. 3 eggs. 1/2 cupful of milk. 1 teaspoonful of baking powder. And 1 pound of flour.
Sweet tart paste is halfway between cake and pie-paste and better than common paste for apple-cake and many other articles, such as shell pies to be baked the day before and filled with preserves.
A slab pie in all but name: apples fried in butter until browned, sealed between two sheets of sweet paste, then turned out and cut into squares. The recipe assumes a professional cook, so the oven temperature and pan size are left to your judgment.
- The hinge: brown the apples properlyThe apples are cooked twice, and the frying stage is where the flavour is made. Use two wide pans as directed so the fruit sits in a shallow layer and drives off water instead of steaming into sauce; the instruction that they "are expected to look brown" is the whole point of the dish.
- Quantities in modern termsTwo heaping quarts of quartered apples is roughly 2 1/2 to 3 lb of fruit, about six to eight medium apples. Three-quarters of a pound of sugar is about 1 2/3 cups granulated; three-quarters of a pound of butter is three sticks.
- That much butterThree sticks to under three pounds of apples is a generous ratio, and much of it will be left in the pan once the fruit has browned. Drain the apples before they go into the crust or the bottom pastry will not set.
- Sugar to suit the fruitThe note to use more with sour apples still applies, and the reverse is worth acting on: modern dessert apples are considerably sweeter than the tart cooking varieties assumed here. Start well below 1 2/3 cups with Galas or Fujis, and use the full amount only with Bramleys, Granny Smiths or old-style tart apples.
- Oven and timeNo temperature is given, and the book names no oven heat: only "bake as long as you can without scorching--about three-quarters of an hour." A moderate oven of around 350F in a heavy pan is a reasonable modern reading. Check the underside crust rather than the top, since the filling is already cooked.
- Pan and pastry quantityTwo pounds of paste, rolled thin for a base and lid, suits a 9x13 pan or a quarter sheet pan. Butter it generously, as the cake is turned out inverted.
- Turning outLet the cake stand ten or fifteen minutes before inverting so the caramelised sugar firms slightly, but do not let it cool completely or it will stick. A rimless sheet or board pressed on top and a quick flip is the safest method.
- The cookie doughThe subsidiary recipe is a sweet enriched dough by weight: 1/2 lb sugar (about 1 1/8 cups), 1/4 lb butter (1 stick), 3 eggs, 1/2 cup milk, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 lb flour (about 3 1/2 cups). Add a pinch of salt, which the original omits, and chill the dough before rolling.
- Yield and servingA 9x13 pan cuts into twelve to sixteen squares. Cold heavy cream poured over, as the original prefers, is better than whipped cream here; the cake is dense and sweet and wants something liquid.
The American Pastry Cook belongs to the run of trade manuals Jessup Whitehead wrote in Chicago in the 1880s and 1890s for hotel, steamboat and restaurant cooks, and the aside about "home folks" using cookie dough while "hotel cooks" use sweet tart paste is exactly the register of the book: two ways of doing a thing, with a practical reason given for the professional's choice. Baking fruit in a shallow pan and cutting it in squares rather than wedges is a format that feeds a table quickly and travels well on a plate, and one that survives as the slab pie. Frying the apples in butter before they ever meet the pastry browns the sugars in the fruit and drives off the water that otherwise makes a soggy bottom crust, a logic it shares with tarte Tatin. The recipe's own preference for cold thick cream rather than a cooked sauce is worth noting.