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Jellied Apples
13/4 Tablespoons Granulated Gelatine 1/2 Cup Cold Water 1 Quart Cooked Apples, Pared and Quartered 11/2 Cup Cold Water 1 Cup Corn Syrup (light) Hot Water 1/4 Teaspoon Ginger 1/2 Teaspoon Cinnamon 1 Slice Lemon 1 1-3 Tablespoons Lemon Juice 1/4 Teaspoon grated Lemon Rind Soak the gelatine in 1/2 cup cold water for 10 minutes. Cook together the 1/2 cups cold water, syrup, spices, and slice of lemon for 10 minutes. Add apples a few at a time, letting them cook until tender, but not broken. Remove from syrup when done and place in moulds.
When all apples are cooked add hot syrup to the soaked gelatine, add enough hot water to make 2 cups liquid, add lemon juice and grated rind; strain, pour over apples and chill. (Makes eight servings.)
A moulded apple jelly of the kind that turned up on early twentieth-century supper tables as both salad and dessert. The recipe is sound; the arithmetic on the page has suffered from the typesetting.
- The garbled fractionsRead "11/2 Cup Cold Water" as 1½ cups and "1 1-3 Tablespoons Lemon Juice" as 1⅓ tablespoons (4 teaspoons). The gelatine is 1¾ tablespoons, which is a little over two envelopes of modern granulated gelatine for 2 cups of liquid — a firm, sliceable set that will hold the apple quarters suspended.
- "1 quart cooked apples"Misleading heading: the apples are pared and quartered raw and then poached in the syrup. A quart measure of quartered apples is roughly 1½ lb, or four to five medium fruit.
- Choose an apple that holdsThe hinge of the dish is the instruction to cook the quarters tender but not broken. A firm variety — Braeburn, Granny Smith, Honeycrisp — poached in barely simmering syrup, a few pieces at a time so the pan is never crowded, gives the clean shapes the mould depends on. Mcintosh and similar will collapse into sauce.
- Light corn syrupStill sold under the same name and unchanged in function here. It keeps the poaching syrup clear and stops the jelly from crystallising; honey or sugar syrup will work but will colour and flavour the result.
- Soaking the gelatineTen minutes in cold water is the bloom. The book has you add the hot syrup to the bloomed gelatine; stir until no granules remain against the side of the bowl — undissolved gelatine settles out and can leave a rubbery layer at the base of the mould.
- Topping up to two cupsThe apples absorb syrup, so the amount left in the pan varies. Measure what you have, then make it up to 2 cups with hot water before straining over the fruit; that ratio is what sets the jelly properly.
- Chilling and unmouldingThe book says only "chill." Allow at least four hours, or overnight for a large single mould. Dip the mould to the rim in warm water for a few seconds and invert onto a wetted plate, which lets you slide the jelly into position.
- ServingEight servings, as stated. Dishes of this kind were served cold, sometimes with whipped cream, sometimes on lettuce alongside cold pork or poultry.
Granulated gelatine in envelopes did away with a long kitchen job: the older way to a moulded jelly was to boil calf's feet or isinglass and clarify the result, which is part of why moulded dishes had been associated with a well-staffed kitchen. By the early twentieth century packaged gelatine and bottled light corn syrup were both cheap grocery staples, and manufacturers of each promoted recipes of this type in their booklets. The result sits in an ambiguous place that modern menus have lost — sweet enough for dessert, tart and spiced enough to be sent out on a lettuce leaf next to cold meat, as jellied fruit dishes of the period often were.