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Apples Baked with Honey
Apples, Pared and Cored Water Honey Place apples in pan. Surround by equal parts of honey and water. Bake slowly, basting frequently.
A three-line recipe that assumes you know what a baked apple should look like coming out. The only real variables are the apple, the depth of the syrup and the patience.
- "Bake slowly"A slow oven; the book gives no temperature, and period slow ovens ran roughly 250-325F. Whole pared apples are likely to need something in the region of 45 minutes to an hour, depending on size and variety; they are done when a skewer meets no resistance at the core but the shoulders still hold their shape.
- QuantitiesNone are given. For six medium apples, about 1/2 cup honey and 1/2 cup water gives enough syrup to lie shallowly around the fruit and to baste with. "Surround" implies the apples sit in liquid rather than swim in it.
- Choose a firm applePared apples have no skin to hold them together, so a variety that collapses is fatal here. Braeburn, Golden Delicious, Winesap or Northern Spy hold up; McIntosh and most modern soft eating apples will slump into sauce.
- Basting is the instruction that mattersWithout skin, the exposed flesh dries and browns unevenly. Spoon the syrup over every ten minutes or so; that is what produces the glazed, translucent surface the recipe is aiming at.
- Honey darkensHoney scorches at a lower temperature than sugar syrup, which is the other reason for the slow oven. If the pan liquid starts to smell caramelised or catch at the edges, add a splash of hot water rather than turning the oven down mid-bake.
- Pan choiceA shallow baking dish just large enough to hold the apples with a little space between them. Too wide and the syrup spreads thin and burns; too crowded and the fruit steams rather than glazes.
- Yield and servingOne apple per person, served warm with the pan syrup poured over, and cream if you want it. The syrup thickens considerably as it cools, so serve promptly or reheat gently.
Baked apples belong to the oldest and plainest end of English and American home cookery — fruit, a sweetener, an oven that happened to be hot from something else. What places this version in its own book is the honey. The Bride's Cook Book groups it under "Honey, Ices and Gelatines." Honey was widely promoted as a household sweetener in the early twentieth century, and books aimed at new housekeepers took up honey recipes, though the precise route by which this one arrived is not recoverable from the page. Honey behaves differently from sugar in the oven — it is hygroscopic, more acidic, and browns sooner — which may be why a recipe this short still bothers to specify a slow bake and frequent basting. Diluting honey with an equal part of water is a simple way to make it pourable and to give something to baste with.