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Pommes à L'Allemande
1104. Peel, and cut the fruit into quarters; take away the pips; put the apples into a stewpan of boiling butter; shake them for five minutes over a brisk fire, letting them become nicely browned; then dust them plentifully with flour, add a little water or Rhine wine, and sugar agreeably to taste. Let them simmer for half an hour, and serve with the syrup, which should be thickened with a well-beaten egg.
A fried-apple compote thickened twice over — once with flour, once with egg. The whole dish turns on how the egg is handled at the end.
- The egg must not boilBeat the egg, then slacken it with several spoonfuls of the hot syrup before stirring it back into the pan off the heat. Added straight to a simmering pan it scrambles and the syrup turns grainy.
- QuantitiesNone are given. For four people, reckon on about 2 lb of apples, 2 oz butter, a rounded tablespoon of flour, 4 oz sugar and a scant cup of liquid, adjusting the sugar to the fruit.
- "Boiling butter"Probably means butter melted and foaming in a wide pan rather than a depth of fat, though the phrase "a stewpan of boiling butter" may imply a more generous quantity. Keep it just short of browning before the apples go in, or the milk solids will scorch during the five minutes of shaking.
- A brisk fireHigh heat. The point is colour on the cut faces, so use a pan wide enough that the quarters sit in one layer and are not steaming each other.
- Rhine wineA dry or off-dry German white — Riesling or Silvaner. It contributes acidity as much as flavour; water alone will give a flatter result, and a squeeze of lemon helps if you use it.
- Half an hour is too longModern dessert apples break down far faster than the firm cooking varieties assumed here. Check at 10 to 15 minutes and stop when a knife meets slight resistance; a Bramley or other cooker will go to purée well before the half hour.
- The flourDusting it over hot buttered fruit cooks the raw taste out, but stir gently and add the liquid in stages or it will set in lumps against the apples.
- ServingServes four as a warm dessert, on its own or with a plain sponge or rusks. It does not reheat well once the egg is in.
Apples served as a hot sweet course rather than a pie filling are a familiar feature of German cookery, and the dish carries a French name: pommes à l'allemande, apples in the German style. The Rhine wine points the same way; Rhine wines were widely drunk in Britain through the nineteenth-century hock trade. Finishing the syrup with beaten egg belongs to an older tradition of egg-bound sauces, before cornflour became a kitchen staple, and it is what separates this from a plain stewed apple: the result is closer to a loose custard poured over fried fruit.