No. 2995

Apples in Surprise

Pommes en Surprise

Roll out sufficient puff paste parings (No. 146) to the thickness of an eighth of an inch to make eight squares of five inches each. Peel and turn eight good medium-sized russet apples to have them two and a half inches in diameter; empty out the cores with a five-eighth of an inch column tube, and on each square of paste lay one apple; brush them over with butter, besprinkle with sugar, then fill the hollow in the apple with apricot marmalade (No. 3675); wet the edges of the paste, raise it up and enclose the apples well inside, attaching it firmly on top; moisten this and lay over it a round piece of paste cut out with a channeled pastry cutter (Fig. 16). Range the apples on a baking sheet a short distance apart, egg over, and cook in a slow oven for three-quarters of an hour. Ten minutes before removing glaze them over with sugar, and lay them on a dish as soon as they are done.

← No. 2994 Apples Browned Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 2996 Apples, Nubian—Meringued →

For the Modern Kitchen

A puff-paste apple dumpling from Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), dressed up with a cut lid. The whole thing hinges on the apple being one that holds its shape while the pastry colours.

"Turn" the applesTurning here means paring them down to a smooth, even sphere with a knife, not spinning them on anything. Two and a half inches across is the target so that all eight cook at the same rate.
Puff paste paringsThe trimmings left from previous puff pastry work, re-rolled; they tend to rise less evenly than fresh paste, which matters little under a heavy apple. Store-bought all-butter puff, rolled to 1/8 inch and given a short rest in the fridge before assembly, does the same job.
Column tubeA 5/8-inch column cutter or apple corer. Ranhofer says only to "empty out the cores"; leaving the base intact will help keep the apricot marmalade from running onto the sheet, though the recipe does not specify it.
RussetsRusset apples in the American sense of the 1890s were firm, dry-fleshed keepers. Any firm baking apple that does not collapse — Braeburn, Golden Russet, Bramley if you accept some softening — will serve; avoid Red Delicious and other mealy sorts.
A slow ovenRoughly 300F, though the term covers a range. The long, low bake is deliberate: the apple needs three-quarters of an hour to go tender through, and a hotter oven would set and brown the pastry long before that.
SealingWet edges, gather the paste up over the apple and press it firmly closed at the crown, then set the fluted round on top as a patch over the seam. A split dumpling floods the sheet with syrup.
GlazingEgg wash before baking; ten minutes from the end, dust with granulated sugar as Ranhofer directs, so that it melts to a glaze. Watch it at this stage, as sugar can scorch.
Yield and serviceEight dumplings, listed by Ranhofer among the hot entremets. Best served hot and soon after baking; the pastry base softens as the apple gives up juice.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a compendium of the restaurant's French repertoire, and its numbered cross-references (paste No. 146, apricot marmalade No. 3675) make it read like a working kitchen manual rather than a domestic cookbook. Pommes en surprise belongs to a large family of enclosed baked apples, of which the English apple dumpling is the most familiar, where the "surprise" is the hidden filling revealed when the pastry is cut. En surprise was a common nineteenth-century menu formula for dishes concealing something inside a shell or crust, the omelette surprise being the best-known example. Ranhofer's instruction to use puff paste parings is a reminder of how such kitchens worked, with the trimmings of one day's vol-au-vents becoming the next day's entremets.