No. 2993

Apples, Baron de Brisse Style

Pommes a la Baron de Brisse

Peel twelve medium-sized apples, remove the cores with a tin tube, rub them over with lemon and cook in a light syrup, being careful to keep them slightly firm; drain on a cloth. Prepare a croquette of semolina preparation (No. 3019); spread some of it on the bottom of a dish, having it half an inch thick, and pour the remainder in a pocket furnished with a channeled socket (Fig. 179) and push this out in the shape of a plait to form a border around the inside edge of the dish; range the apples in the center; fill the cavity of the apples with cream rice preparation (No. 160) and on the top of each one place a small cream rice pear-shaped croquette, containing a shred of angelica to imitate a stalk. Decorate the border between each apple with angelica lozenges and preserved cherries (demi-sucre), and fill up the center with whole marrons cooked in light syrup with vanilla, and mixed with a few spoonfuls of Smyrna raisins washed in hot water, the whole to be stirred with a little apricot marmalade. Serve separately a chestnut syrup with vanilla taken from some preserved chestnuts (No. 3689).

← No. 2992 Apples Baked Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 2994 Apples Browned →

For the Modern Kitchen

A composed hot entremets from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, built from three sub-recipes the book expects you to have on hand. The work is assembly; the only difficult cooking is the apples themselves.

The hinge: keep the apples firmPoached apples that collapse ruin the whole construction, since each one has to sit upright in the centre of the dish and hold a filling and a croquette on top. Use a firm cooking apple, simmer in the syrup barely below a bubble, and pull them while a knife still meets resistance.
Light syrupA light syrup of this kind runs on the order of one part sugar to two or three parts water rather than a heavy preserving syrup, though Ranhofer gives no proportions here. A denser syrup will candy the surface and toughen the apple before the inside is cooked.
The cross-referenced preparationsNo. 3019 is the semolina croquette preparation: semolina cooked stiff in sweetened milk and cooled until it can be piped. No. 160 is a cream rice, rice cooked soft in sweetened milk. No. 3689 is preserved chestnuts, from which the vanilla chestnut syrup is taken; a good jarred marron confit and its syrup stand in for both that and the marrons.
"A tin tube" and "a pocket with a channeled socket"The first is an apple corer; the second is a piping bag with a fluted or star tip. The plait is piped as a ropelike border around the inside rim of the dish; Ranhofer does not describe the stroke.
Angelica and demi-sucre cherriesCandied angelica stem, cut in green lozenges, is now a specialty item; candied citron peel or a strip of candied green melon serves the same decorative purpose. Demi-sucre cherries are lightly candied rather than the hard glacé kind — drained brandied or amarena cherries are closer than modern glacé.
Smyrna raisinsPale seedless raisins from Turkey — golden raisins or sultanas. The hot-water wash both cleans and plumps them; keep it, or they stay leathery against the soft chestnuts.
Apricot marmaladeSieved apricot preserve, warmed and used as a binder and glaze. Thin it with a spoonful of the chestnut syrup so it coats the marrons rather than gluing them together.
ServingTwelve apples, so twelve portions. It is a hot entremets: assemble on a warmed dish and send it out promptly, with the vanilla chestnut syrup in a sauceboat alongside.

A Little History

The name honors Léon Brisse, the Baron Brisse (1813–1876), who wrote a daily menu and recipe column for the Paris paper La Liberté and became one of the first gastronomic journalists to reach a mass readership; a dish titled à la Baron Brisse is best read as a nod to him rather than as a reconstruction of anything he personally cooked. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that kitchen, and the entremets chapters show how thoroughly its sweet course was French: semolina and rice croquettes, candied angelica, chestnuts in vanilla syrup. Marrons in particular were a mark of the season and the expense — a dish that used whole ones in syrup, plus a separate chestnut syrup served apart, was announcing its cost as much as its flavor.