No. 3125

Glazed Apples

Pommes Glacees

Choose a few small, even-sized apples; empty the centers with a column tube five-eighths of an inch in diameter, peel and cook them in slightly sweetened acidulated water. In order to have them remain whole it is advisable to cook scarcely boiling, and to keep them covered. Drain and place them in a vessel, pouring a little syrup over; leave to cool. When cold drain and cover them several times with a brush dipped in lukewarm apricot marmalade (No. 3675) so that it adheres to the apples, and cover them completely; decorate around the tops with a circle of small dots of angelica. Fill the hole in the center with candied cherries or fruit jelly, such as quince, currant or apple, or use all mingled together; arrange the apples in a pyramid on a dish.

← No. 3124 Zephyr of Rice with Pineapple Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3126 Glazed Marmalade of Apples →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cold apple entremets from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, built on one technique: poaching whole peeled apples without letting them collapse. Everything after that is decoration.

Keep it below a simmerThe hinge of the dish. Peeled, cored apples held just under the boil, with the surface barely moving, cook through while holding their shape. A rolling boil tumbles them and they split at the core hole.
"Column tube five-eighths of an inch"A cylindrical cutter, i.e. an apple corer of about 16 mm. Any standard corer will do; push it straight through from the stem end before peeling, so the fruit still has its skin to hold it together during coring.
Acidulated waterWater with lemon juice or a little vinegar, to keep the peeled flesh from browning. About the juice of one lemon per quart is plenty. "Slightly sweetened" means a light syrup, on the order of 4 oz sugar per quart, not a heavy poaching syrup.
Choose a firm appleThe recipe assumes a cooking apple that holds together. Braeburn, Pink Lady, Golden Delicious or a small russet work; McIntosh and most modern soft dessert apples will go to sauce. Small and even-sized matters because they must poach at the same rate and stack afterwards.
Apricot marmaladeRanhofer's No. 3675 is a cross-reference to his apricot marmalade, presumably a cooked-down and sieved preserve of the kind a modern kitchen calls apricot glaze or nappage. Warm sieved apricot jam thinned with a spoonful of water, brushed on lukewarm, does the same job. Several thin coats set better than one thick one; let each dry before the next.
AngelicaCandied angelica stem, once a standard pastry green and now a specialty item from confectionery suppliers. Cut into small dots or diamonds. Candied citron peel or pistachio halves are the usual substitutes if none is to hand.
Drain them properlyAny poaching liquid left clinging will thin the apricot coat and make it slide. Drain the apples hollow-side down on a rack for a good while before glazing, and blot the cavity.
Yield and serviceFigure one apple per person; the recipe itself says only "a few." The pyramid needs a broad base -- a ring of apples with fewer above -- and is easier to build if the glaze has set firm and the dish is chilled. It is a cold entremets, served at the end of the meal, not a hot pudding.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the house repertoire written down — roughly twelve hundred pages of it, numbered and cross-referenced like a catalogue, which is why the apricot marmalade here is a citation rather than a recipe. Glazed fruits of this kind belong to the French entremets tradition Ranhofer trained in, where the dish was judged first by how it looked on the platter: whole fruit, lacquered to a shine with sieved apricot, studded with green angelica and red cherry, and stacked into a pyramid for the table. The apricot glaze itself is one of the oldest tricks in the pastry kitchen and remains standard on fruit tarts today, for the same two reasons — it seals the fruit against drying and it makes it gleam under candlelight or a chandelier. Angelica, the candied stem of Angelica archangelica, was the period's default green garnish and has largely dropped out of use since, which is the clearest mark of the recipe's age.