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1164. Squeeze the juice of two or three lemons into a small pipkin or enamelled saucepan. Take some apples (the smallest you can get), peel them, remove the cores, and cut them lengthwise into thin slices, throw them into the boiling lemon juice, shake them well for a minute or two over the fire, take them off and put them aside to absorb the lemon juice as much as possible. When quite cold, put them into a syrup of boiling sugar, let it simmer until the syrup is turned to sugar again; take out the fruit and let it become dry.
Candied apple slices, finished by letting the syrup crystallise back to sugar around the fruit rather than by drying in a low oven. The whole outcome turns on how far the syrup is boiled.
- The hinge: graining the syrup"Until the syrup is turned to sugar again" means boiling off water until the sugar recrystallises into an opaque coating. The original gives no temperature and grains the syrup with the fruit in it over the fire; in modern terms this means taking the syrup to about the soft-ball stage and then stirring or agitating until it clouds and grains onto the fruit. Stop before it colours, or you have caramel rather than a white praline crust.
- No syrup quantity is givenThe original leaves the sugar and water entirely to the cook. A workable ratio is about 1 lb sugar to 4 fl oz water, enough to cover the apple slices in a small pan; scale to the fruit rather than guessing at a fixed amount.
- A pipkinA small earthenware pot with a handle, used over direct heat. An enamelled or stainless saucepan is the modern equivalent; avoid bare cast iron or aluminium, which react with the lemon juice.
- Lemon juiceTwo or three lemons yields roughly 60-150 ml depending on the fruit. That is a shallow depth in a small pan, which is the point: the slices are meant to be shaken through it, not swum in it.
- Choice of appleThe original asks only for the smallest apples available; reading that as a call for firm, dense fruit is an editorial inference. A crisp eating apple such as Cox or Braeburn holds its shape; Bramley and other cookers are likelier to collapse during the syrup stage.
- Slice thicknessThin means about 3 mm. Thicker slices will not dry out and will stay leathery in the centre; much thinner and they disintegrate in the boiling juice.
- The one to two minute boilThis is a brief acid bath to firm the fruit and stop it browning, not a cooking stage. Cook them longer and they soften before they reach the syrup.
- Drying and keepingSpread the sugared slices on a rack or parchment and leave several hours at room temperature until no longer tacky. Stored airtight and away from damp they keep a few weeks; humidity makes the crystallised coating weep.
- YieldThree or four small apples should give enough for six to eight as a petit four or as a garnish for a cream or ice, though the original states no quantity of fruit and no yield.