Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Stewed Apples
Stewed Apples
Great care should be taken in the selection of the apples to avoid those which "fall" easily. The cores should be removed before peeling and the apples placed in sufficient water to cover them. A little spinach green may be placed in to flavor and color. When the apples are yet whole, but are transparent, they may be carefully lifted out with a strainer and placed on a glass dish. The centers should then be filled with red jelly, and the tops masked with apple or orange marmalade. The water they were boiled in should be reduced by simmering until quite syrupy; it may then be colored with a little cochineal and flavored with lemon, and then poured around the dish.
A whole poached apple, filled and glazed, from an era when a dessert was expected to look composed on the dish. The whole trick is choosing a firm apple and keeping the poaching water barely trembling.
- Choose an apple that holdsApples that "fall" easily are the ones that collapse into sauce — Bramley, McIntosh, most older cooking varieties. Use Braeburn, Golden Delicious, Gala or Honeycrisp, which stay whole and go translucent without bursting.
- Core first, peel secondThe recipe specifies this order. The likely reason is that an unpeeled apple gives your hand and the corer something to grip, so the cavity comes out clean and centred. Peel afterward and drop each apple straight into the water to stop it browning.
- Poach, never boilA rolling boil knocks the fruit apart and the skinless surface roughens. Hold the water at 180–190F, barely shivering, and expect 15–25 minutes depending on size. "Transparent" is the doneness cue — the flesh loses its opacity and a skewer slides in with slight resistance.
- Sweeten the poaching waterThe recipe specifies water alone, but plain water gives a thin, sour syrup at the end; poaching in a light syrup, roughly 1 cup sugar to 4 cups water, helps the reduction thicken properly.
- "Spinach green"A professional colouring of the period: spinach leaves pounded and their juice heated until the green protein coagulates, then strained off and used as a paste. A few drops of green food colouring does the same job, or leave it out — the flavour contribution is negligible.
- CochinealPowdered scale insect, and still with us as carmine or E120. Modern red food colouring is the practical substitute; note that carmine is not vegan and is an occasional allergen.
- "Red jelly"Redcurrant jelly is a likely reading, though the recipe specifies only "red jelly". Warm it just enough to spoon into the cavities so it settles level, then let it set again before masking the tops with marmalade.
- Reducing the syrupReduce until it coats a spoon but stays pourable — it will thicken further as it cools, and an over-reduced syrup sets to toffee around the base of the fruit. Add the lemon at the end, off the heat, so the brightness survives.
- Yield and servingOne apple per person; the recipe scales to whatever your pan holds in a single layer. Serve cool or barely warm on a glass dish, as directed, with the syrup poured around rather than over so the marmalade masking stays glossy.
Oscar Tschirky's book, published in 1896, records the working practice of the Waldorf-Astoria kitchen, and this entry reads like a professional's note to another professional: no quantities, no timings, just the sequence and the points where it goes wrong. Spinach green and cochineal were common greens and reds in nineteenth-century professional kitchens, often prepared in-house; federal regulation of food colouring in the United States did not arrive until the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.