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Pommes a La Hollandaise
1105. Pare some rather small apples, prick them carefully all over, and, as you do them, throw them into a syrup made with equal quantities of water and white sugar. Put them on a slow but not smoky fire, and, as soon as they boil, remove them to a little distance from the fire, so that they may absorb the syrup, and become gradually clear without breaking. When they are done, put them into a glass dessert dish, and empty a small flask of Eau de Vie de Dantzig into the syrup. Mix well, and pour it over the apples. Should you not have this Eau de Vie, take a sufficient quantity of refined Hollands, and having procured a gilder's leaf of gold, mingle it with the syrup by bruising it with a spoon. The principal attraction of this elegant preparation is its beautiful transparency, which renders it a recherché ornament upon the dessert tables of continental dinner-givers of celebrity.
A dessert of whole poached apples finished with a gold-flecked liqueur, built entirely on control of the heat: the fruit must clarify without collapsing.
- The hinge: never let it boil hardOnce the syrup reaches a boil, pull the pan to a little distance from the heat, as the recipe directs, and hold it at the barest simmer. A hard boil breaks the fruit and clouds the syrup, which destroys the transparency the whole dish is for.
- Syrup proportionsThe recipe says only 'equal quantities of water and white sugar'; read either by volume or by weight (a litre of water to a kilo of sugar) it gives a heavy syrup. Make enough to cover the apples completely, or turn them regularly so the exposed side does not dry.
- Choosing applesUse small, firm varieties that hold their shape when cooked, and allow long, slow poaching; the recipe gives no timing. Pricking all over is not decorative: it lets the syrup penetrate the pared fruit so it clarifies gradually without breaking.
- Eau de Vie de DantzigThis is Danziger Goldwasser, a spiced liqueur carrying suspended flakes of gold leaf. It is still made and sold; the recipe's 'small flask' is not a defined measure, so start with 4-6 fl oz and taste.
- Refined HollandsHollands is Dutch genever, a malty juniper spirit. Modern London dry gin is drier and more aggressively botanical, so a genever or an oude jenever is much closer to what is meant.
- Gold leafBuy leaf sold explicitly as edible, 22-24 carat, labelled E175. Gilder's leaf from an art supplier may be imitation "Dutch metal" of brass or aluminium and is not intended to be eaten.
- Alcohol goes in off the heatThe spirit is stirred into the syrup at the end and never cooked, so its strength stays in the finished dish. Worth knowing before serving it to anyone avoiding alcohol.
History: Danziger Goldwasser, the liqueur named here, is a spiced anise-and-caraway cordial from Danzig (now Gdańsk) shot through with flakes of gold leaf; its production is traditionally traced to a distillery founded in the city at the end of the sixteenth century, and the gold was long claimed to have medicinal virtue before it settled into being pure display. That display is the point of the dish. Victorian dessert courses were judged as much on appearance as flavour, and a glass dish of clear apples with gold drifting through the syrup did exactly the work expected of a centrepiece. The recipe's closing appeal to "continental dinner-givers of celebrity" is characteristic of nineteenth-century British cookery writing, when French and German practice carried prestige in the English dining room and a French title on an English dessert was itself part of the effect.