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Stewed Apples, Called Black Caps
1099. Take large French pippins, or golden rennets; cut them in half, and lay them with the flat side downwards in a dish. Put a little currant wine and some fine sugar over them, and put them into a quick oven for half an hour. Boil some currant wine, or other sweet wine, with a little lemon-peel cut in long thin pieces, a small quantity of gelatine, a little lemon-juice, and some sugar together, till the gelatine or isinglass is dissolved; put the apples in a dish, and pour it over them. The jelly should be set before they are sent to table.
A simple baked-apple dish whose name comes from the scorched, blistered tops the halves develop face-down in a hot oven. Two things decide whether it works: real oven heat, and enough gelatine to set a thin wine jelly rather than a syrup.
- Oven heatA "quick oven" is generally reckoned at somewhere around 400-450F. Anything cooler and the apples steam rather than colour, and you lose the blackened caps the dish is named for.
- Choosing applesFrench pippins and golden rennets are old dessert varieties that hold their shape. Use a firm cooking or dessert apple that does not collapse -- Braeburn, Cox, Honeycrisp or Golden Delicious. Bramley and other sauce apples will slump.
- CoringThe original does not mention it. Halve the apples through the equator or stem, scoop out core and pips with a teaspoon or melon baller, and leave the skin on: it holds each half together.
- Currant wineA homemade fruit wine, sweet and lightly acidic, no longer sold in most places. Substitute a sweet white or a light fruit wine -- Riesling, Moscato, or a sweet cider -- with a spoonful of redcurrant jelly stirred in for the flavour.
- Gelatine quantity"A small quantity" is genuinely unquantified here. As a guide for a thin, barely-set jelly, work from the ratio on your gelatine packet for a soft set rather than a firm one; too much and the apples sit under rubber.
- IsinglassNamed as an alternative in the second half of the recipe. It is a fish-derived setting agent once standard in jellies; powdered gelatine, or leaf gelatine bloomed in cold water, does the same job more reliably.
- Dissolving, not boilingBring the wine, lemon peel, juice and sugar to a simmer, then take it off the heat before stirring in the softened gelatine. Gelatine held at a rolling boil loses setting strength.
- Setting and servingPour the hot liquid over the apples in a shallow dish and chill until the jelly has just set -- an hour or two. Serve with cream.