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Compote of Apples
Peel and core some apples, boil them in a light syrup with the rind of lemon pared very thin, and a few cloves. When done, remove the peel and cloves and allow the apples to get cold. Line a compote-case with tart paste, put a sheet of paper in next the paste and fill the center with flour; set in oven to bake. When done and cold, remove the flour and the paper; place boiled rice then in the center and pile the apples around in the shape of a pyramid; mask them over with diluted apricot jam and ornament the compote with preserved cherries and angelica cut up into various shapes, also a few shredded almonds. Care should be taken that the case suits the shape of the dish it is to be served in. Remove the case and ornament the pastry with icing.
This is a plated pastry construction in the French style rather than a simple stewed-fruit compote, and it reads as shorthand written for cooks who already knew the assembly. A few terms need translating before it makes sense.
- The hinge: poach, don't boilPeeled, cored apples held at a bare simmer in syrup for 8-12 minutes keep their shape and can be stacked; a rolling boil turns them to sauce. Test with a skewer and lift them out the moment they yield, then cool them in their own syrup.
- A light syrupRoughly 1 cup sugar to 2 cups water, dissolved before the fruit goes in.
- Compote-case and tart pasteThe "case" is a free-standing pastry shell, baked in a flan ring or shallow tart tin; "tart paste" is a short paste for tarts, probably sweetened. The recipe gives no oven setting; bake it blind in a moderate oven until the base is dry and pale gold.
- Flour as baking weightThe paper-and-flour trick is the period version of pie weights. Dried beans or ceramic weights do the same job with less mess.
- Boiled riceIn desserts of this type the rice is usually cooked in sweetened milk until thick, in the manner of a rice pudding, then cooled so it holds a mound. The recipe itself specifies only "boiled rice".
- Apricot glaze"Diluted apricot jam" is jam warmed with a spoonful of water and pushed through a sieve. Brush it on while just warm and fluid; cold it drags the apples out of position.
- AngelicaCandied angelica stem, sold green and used as a garnish in Victorian and Edwardian pastry work. It is now hard to find outside specialist confectioners; candied citron or glacé fruit stands in for the colour and texture.
- The closing sentenceThe original wording is genuinely ambiguous and clearly out of sequence with what precedes it; "remove the case" most likely means unmoulding the baked shell from its ring rather than discarding it.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities or case size. Built as described it is a centrepiece dessert, portioned at the table.
Rice and poached fruit under an apricot glaze is the classic French pâtisserie combination known as à la Condé, traditionally named for the princely house of Condé and usually built with pears or apricots as well as apples. Oscar Tschirky, who ran the Waldorf dining rooms from 1893 and published this collection in 1896, was cataloguing the repertoire of a hotel kitchen working in the grand French manner, where a dessert was expected to be architecture as much as food: a pastry base, a bound filling to give height, fruit set in a pyramid, and a finish of glaze, cherries, angelica and shredded almonds. The instruction that the case should suit the shape of the serving dish is simple practicality.