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Boiled Cider Apple Sauce
Pare, quarter and core apples sufficient to fill a gallon porcelain kettle, put in it a half gallon boiled cider, let it boil. Wash the apples and put in kettle, place a plate over them, and boil steadily but not rapidly until they are thoroughly cooked, testing by taking one from under the edge of the plate with a fork. Do not remove the plate until done, or the apples will sink to the bottom and burn. Apples may be cooked in sweet cider in the same way.- Mrs. W. W. W.
A two-ingredient preserve that depends entirely on knowing what "boiled cider" is. Everything else is a matter of keeping the fruit under the syrup.
- Boiled ciderSweet cider reduced by long simmering to roughly a seventh of its volume, giving a dark, tart syrup about the consistency of thin molasses. It is still sold by New England producers as boiled cider or cider syrup; a half gallon here is 8 cups, which is a great deal of a costly ingredient, so scale the whole recipe down freely.
- Sweet ciderIn this book that means fresh, unfermented apple juice, not the alcoholic drink the word denotes in Britain. The final line means you can cook the apples in plain cider instead of the reduced syrup, for a thinner, less concentrated sauce.
- The plate is the whole techniqueApples float until they have absorbed liquid. An inverted heatproof plate that just fits inside the pan holds them down in the syrup so they cook evenly instead of steaming dry above the line and scorching once they collapse. Lifting it early defeats the point, as the recipe says.
- Pare, then washThe order in the original is muddled. Wash the apples first, then pare, quarter and core them.
- The kettleA gallon porcelain kettle is a 4-quart enameled or enamel-lined pan. Enamel or stainless matters here: uncoated cast iron or aluminum reacts with the acid and dulls both color and flavor.
- ApplesUse a firm variety that holds its shape under long cooking rather than a sauce apple that dissolves at once. Since the fruit is left in quarters and cooked in syrup, the result is likely nearer a preserve than the smooth puree the name 'apple sauce' now suggests.
- Timing and heat"Steadily but not rapidly" means a steady, gentle boil rather than a hard one. The recipe gives no time; cook until the quarters are thoroughly done, testing through the gap at the edge of the plate, as directed, rather than uncovering.
- Yield and keepingYield will depend on how far the fruit and syrup cook down. The recipe gives no processing instructions, so treat it as a refrigerator preserve and use it within a few weeks; for shelf storage follow current water-bath canning directions for apple products.
Boiled cider was a standing item in nineteenth-century farm households, especially in apple-growing regions. In the weeks after pressing, surplus cider was boiled down in large kettles until it kept without fermenting, producing a concentrated sweet-tart syrup that stood in for sugar in pies, mincemeat, drinks and preserves like this one. Apple butter made the same way is its better-known cousin; this recipe stops short of that, leaving the fruit in identifiable quarters. That the recipe is credited only to a set of initials is typical of the compiled community cookbooks of the period, which gathered contributions from subscribers and assumed the reader already had a source of boiled cider in the cellar.