Fried Apples
Quarter and core apples without paring; prepare frying-pan by heating it and putting in beef-drippings, lay the apples in the pan, skin side down, sprinkle with a little brown sugar, and when nearly done, turn and brown thoroughly. Or, cut in slices across the core, and fry like pancakes, turning when brown; serve with granulated sugar sprinkled over them.
A skillet side dish from the era when beef drippings sat in a crock by the stove. The method is sound; only the fat and the fruit choice need thought.
- Beef drippingsThe rendered fat skimmed from roasting beef, kept for frying. Bacon fat is the closest common substitute and suits the dish; butter works but browns faster and will scorch at the sugar stage.
- Apple choiceAn apple that holds its shape matters more here than sweetness. Firm varieties such as Granny Smith, Braeburn or Winesap keep their quarters intact; Red Delicious and McIntosh collapse into sauce.
- Skin left onThe recipe is explicit: quarter and core "without paring." Leaving the peel on plausibly helps the quarters hold their shape, and it is the skin side that takes the first and longest contact with the pan.
- Heat levelMedium rather than high. Sugar in a hot pan will burn before the fruit softens, so expect several minutes on the skin side before turning.
- Sugar timingThe brown sugar goes on the cut faces early in the first version, but the caramelizing happens only after the turn, in the last two or three minutes. Watch it closely; that is the point where the dish is lost.
- Slices across the coreThe second method gives rings with the star of seeds in the middle. Cut them about a third of an inch thick, flick out the seeds, and fry three to four minutes a side.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantity; three or four large apples will fill a large skillet. Fried apples were commonly a breakfast dish alongside pork or ham, or a supper side with sausage, rather than a dessert -- though the second version, sprinkled with granulated sugar, edges that way.
Fried apples are associated with the pork-and-orchard economy of the American South and Appalachia, where home-rendered fat was plentiful and cellared apples kept into spring. Cooking the fruit in drippings was plain thrift rather than a flourish: the fat was already there, and the sweetness balanced salt-cured meat at breakfast. The instruction to leave the apples unpared is characteristic of the period's cookery, where peeling was work and the peel did useful structural service.