No. 3014

Cream with Apples

Creme aux Pommes

Mince six peeled russet apples, fry them for a few moments in butter in a thin sautoir to soften slightly without letting them melt; sweeten moderately. Make a pint of cream of biscuit preparation (No. 3011), strain it through a fine sieve and place it in a saucepan, then heat it slightly while stirring over a slow fire. Mix the apples in with the cream and pour the whole into a deep china baking dish; cook for three-quarters of an hour in a slack oven and if deemed necessary cover over with paper. Besprinkle the surface with fine sugar a few moments before serving, then remove from the oven and serve in the same dish.

← No. 3013 Cream Pamela—Fried Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3015 Crescents of Noodles with Cherries →

For the Modern Kitchen

A baked custard with a layer of buttered apples folded through it, from Ranhofer's Delmonico's repertoire. The whole thing hinges on the custard base at No. 3011 and on keeping the oven low enough that it never boils.

The cross-reference"Cream of biscuit preparation" (No. 3011) is not reproduced here; the name points to a sweetened custard enriched with pounded dry biscuit, presumably cooked with egg yolks and sugar and then sieved, as the recipe directs. A well-made pint of pouring custard with a few tablespoons of finely crushed ladyfinger crumbs stirred in should behave much the same way in the oven.
A slack ovenSlack is the coolest working heat in a nineteenth-century range, roughly 275-300F. That is the correct range for a baked custard: above about 325F the eggs curdle and weep. Forty-five minutes at that heat is realistic for a deep dish.
Judging it doneRanhofer gives no test. The custard is set when the centre still trembles slightly and an instant thermometer reads 170-175F. It will firm as it cools; pulling it at 185F gives a grainy, watery result.
The paper coverLaid loosely over the dish to stop the surface colouring before the middle sets — foil does the same job. Do not seal it down, or condensation drips back onto the custard.
SautoirA wide, straight-sided shallow pan, essentially a modern sauté pan. "Thin" matters here: it heats fast, so the apples soften in a minute or two rather than stewing down to sauce.
Russet applesDry-fleshed, nutty, low in juice, which is why they hold their shape in butter instead of collapsing. If russets are unavailable, use a firm baking apple such as Braeburn or Golden Russet's near relatives; avoid McIntosh, which melts.
The sugar finishFine sugar scattered a few moments before serving is meant to melt to a thin gloss in the residual oven heat, not to form a hard caramel crust. A brief pass under a broiler achieves the same, watched closely.
YieldRanhofer gives no number of servings; a pint of custard with six apples folded through suggests a dish for roughly six. It is served in the baking dish, so choose one presentable at table.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the book is essentially a working French kitchen's reference translated for an American house — hence the paired titles, crème aux pommes above, "Cream with Apples" beside it. The recipe sits in a long run of hot entremets, the sweet or savoury dishes served after the roast and before dessert proper, and its terseness is deliberate: it assumes a brigade that already has the cream of biscuit preparation standing by and needs only to be told what to do with it. Baked apple-and-custard dishes of this type appear to have been familiar enough in nineteenth-century French cooking, with the biscuit crumb serving to bind the custard and, it is often suggested, to use up the dry sponge and macaroon trimmings a pastry section inevitably accumulated. Russets, the apple Ranhofer specifies, were among the most widely grown American keeping apples of the period and were valued in kitchens precisely for the firm dry flesh that has since made them unfashionable at the fruit stand.