No. 2991

Apples a la Nelson

Pommes a la Nelson

Prepare a semolina croquette preparation (No. 3019), pour it into a flawn mold (No. 3170) previously buttered and sugared; place this in a buttered sautoir and push it into a very slack oven to harden the preparation. Have eight fine apples, suppress the cores with a column tube, enlarge the orifices slightly and peel them very neatly; range them in a sautoir and cover with syrup, and then cook them in the oven; as soon as done drain on a grate and cover with strained peach marmalade (No. 3675). Unmold the semolina on a dish and dress the apples around the edge in a circle; fill the holes in these with marmalade, and lay on each a small round semolina croquette with a piece of angelica to represent a stalk; decorate the edge of the semolina with a wreath composed of angelica lozenges and candied cherries, and fill up the center with some of the same cherries (demi-sucre); push it into the oven for about fifteen minutes and serve with a vanilla syrup thickened with peach marmalade.

A surtout is a plain round or oval base made of semolina, etc., about three-quarters to one inch high.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a numbered cross-reference for every component, so the page reads as an assembly diagram rather than a recipe. Below is what the shorthand means and where the dish can go wrong.

The hinge: a stiff semolina baseThe whole dish stands on a semolina pudding firm enough to unmold and hold apples on its rim. Ranhofer gives the preparation only as a cross-reference (No. 3019), so no proportions appear on the page; what is needed is a thick cooked semolina, sweetened and set until sliceable. If it is loose enough to spoon, it will slump under the fruit.
"Very slack oven"Conventionally read as a low oven, somewhere around 250-300F, though the book gives no figures. The base is being dried and set, not baked to a crust. The final fifteen minutes with the decoration on is a reheat rather than a bake.
Sautoir and flawn moldA sautoir is a straight-sided shallow pan; a heavy skillet or a wide saucepan does the job. A flawn (flan) mold here is a plain ring or shallow round mold that gives the low disc Ranhofer calls a surtout — three-quarters to one inch high, no more.
Column tubeA cylindrical cutter, i.e. an apple corer. Core the apples through, widen the hole a little so it will hold marmalade, then peel — in that order, as the note says, because a peeled apple is slippery to core.
Cooking the applesThey are poached in syrup in the oven, not baked dry. Use a firm variety that keeps its shape — Braeburn, Golden Delicious, Boskoop — and pull them the moment a skewer slides in. Overcooked, they collapse when you lift them onto the base.
Peach marmaladeIn this book marmalade means a thick strained fruit purée cooked with sugar, not citrus preserve. A good peach jam pressed through a sieve is the practical substitute; it needs to be stiff enough to sit in the cored holes.
Angelica and demi-sucre cherriesCandied angelica stem, cut in lozenges and small stalks, is still sold by cake-decorating suppliers but is far from a supermarket item; candied citron peel or thin strips of candied green apple stand in for the look. Demi-sucre cherries are fruit candied in a light syrup, softer and less glassy than modern glacé cherries.
YieldEight apples on one base, so eight servings, each guest taking an apple and a wedge of the semolina disc. Serve the vanilla syrup slackened with peach marmalade separately in a sauceboat rather than flooding the plate.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for most of the last third of the nineteenth century, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire written down — over 3,000 numbered items, each built from other numbered items. Dishes like this one suggest the logic of a large brigade, in which one might imagine a pastry cook making the semolina base and the candied garnish, an entremettier poaching the apples, and the whole thing assembled at the last moment into a set piece for the table, though Ranhofer does not describe the division of labour. Semolina puddings of this type are often said to belong to the same family as the French gâteau de semoule, a thrifty milk-and-grain dish, though the line of descent and the origin of its fruit and candied decoration are traditional rather than documented. The Nelson name is one of hundreds of personal and commemorative titles scattered through the book; Ranhofer rarely explains them, and in most cases the connection is honorific rather than documented.