Apple Sauce
Pare and quarter the apples, put them in a porcelain kettle with a little water; boil until tender, then put in sugar to suit the taste; boil a few minutes longer; use only sour, juicy apples. To be eaten cold.
A bare-bones sauce that depends almost entirely on the apple you choose. The instructions are complete as written; what follows is mostly translation and proportion.
- Porcelain kettleThis means an enamelled cast-iron or enamel-lined pan, not china. The point is a non-reactive surface: apples are acidic enough to pick up a metallic taste from bare cast iron or unlined aluminium. Stainless steel does the same job.
- "Sour, juicy apples"This is the hinge of the recipe. Sweet dessert apples give a flatter, cloying sauce; you want a cooking apple that collapses and has acid to spare. Bramley, Granny Smith, Gravenstein or any tart windfall works. Sweeter varieties tend to hold their shape rather than break down, and need little or no sugar, which loses the sweet-sharp balance the recipe is after.
- "A little water"About 1/4 to 1/2 cup for every 2 lb of apples, just enough to keep them from catching before their own juice runs. Juicy apples need less. Covering the pan for the first few minutes traps steam and reduces the water needed further.
- Sugar to tasteStart at 2 tablespoons per pound of apples and add from there. Sugar goes in only after the fruit is tender, as the original says: added early it tends to slow the softening of the fruit and the pieces stay in stubborn chunks.
- TimingQuartered apples soften in 15 to 20 minutes over medium-low heat; a further 3 to 5 minutes after the sugar is enough to dissolve it and thicken the sauce slightly. Longer cooking drives off the fresh apple flavour and turns the sauce brown.
- TextureThe recipe leaves the sauce as it falls, which gives a rough, spoonable purée with some shape to it. Beat it with a wooden spoon or pass it through a food mill if you want it smooth; a blender tends to give a thin, frothy result.
- Yield and keeping2 lb of apples gives roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups, serving four. Refrigerated in a covered jar it keeps about a week. It is not a preserve and should not be treated as one without a tested canning procedure.
Sweetened stewed fruit sat somewhere between a sauce, a sweetmeat and a dessert in its own right in turn-of-the-century American books, and editors filed it wherever it fit. This entry has the stamp of a book aimed at the practical middle-class housekeeper: no quantities, no yield, and a trust that the cook can judge sugar by tasting. The instruction to use only sour apples reflects an era when orchards and cellars held sharp, keeping varieties grown for cooking rather than eating out of hand, and the closing note "to be eaten cold" suggests a dish served alongside meat or with cream rather than hot from the pan.