No. 3686

Stewed Apples with Jelly

Compote de Pommes a la Gelee

Peel some fine medium-sized apples; suppress the cores with a tin tube, rub the surfaces with half a lemon and cook in a twelve-degree acidulated syrup, being careful to keep them whole. As soon as done drain and range in a tureen, cover with fresh syrup at thirty-two degrees, leaving to cool in this; keep the syrup they were cooked in for further use. Drain the apples from their syrup and dress on a compote dish; filter the syrup kept aside, add a little sugar to it and cook it to the consistency of a jelly (see apple jelly, No. 3668); leave this stand for one moment on the corner of the range, then pour it over the apples; serve when cold.

← No. 3685 Preserved Quinces Preserves & Conserves No. 3687 Stewed Bananas →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional kitchen with a saccharometer on the bench, so the two numbers that look like temperatures are nothing of the kind. Once you translate them, the dish is a straightforward poached-apple compote finished with its own jelly.

"Degrees" means Baume, not FahrenheitBoth figures refer to sugar density read on a Baume hydrometer. Twelve degrees is a light poaching syrup, roughly 1 cup sugar to 3 cups water; thirty-two degrees is a heavy syrup, nearer 2 3/4 to 3 lb sugar to 1 quart of water. If you have a refractometer, aim for about 22 Brix and about 58-60 Brix respectively.
The hinge: barely a simmerEverything here depends on the apples staying whole. Hold the syrup at a bare tremble, 180-190F, and poach until a skewer meets no resistance at the thickest point, usually 10-20 minutes depending on variety. A rolling boil will collapse them into sauce, which is a different dessert.
Acidulated syrupAdd the juice of half a lemon per quart of syrup. The acid keeps the flesh pale and, more usefully, helps the pectin in the fruit and syrup set later.
Suppress the cores with a tin tubeAn apple corer. Push it through from the stem end and leave the fruit otherwise intact.
Choose a firm appleThe recipe says only "fine medium-sized." Use a variety that holds its shape: Braeburn, Pink Lady, Northern Spy or a russet. Golden Delicious and McIntosh disintegrate at exactly the wrong moment.
The second syrup is a soak, not a cookDraining the poached apples into fresh heavy syrup and letting them cool in it firms and sweetens the surface slightly. The recipe specifies only that they cool in it; a few hours, or overnight in the refrigerator, works.
Cooking the reserved syrup to jellyStrain the poaching syrup through a coffee filter or damp muslin, add sugar, and boil to the jelly stage, 220F at sea level, or until a spoonful wrinkles on a chilled plate. It will only set if the apples gave up pectin; peels and cores simmered separately in the syrup improve the odds considerably.
"Stand a moment on the corner of the range"That is Ranhofer's instruction to let the jelly cool off the boil until it thickens slightly but still pours. Poured too hot it runs off the fruit; too cool it sets in the pan.
Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantity; reckon one apple per person, dressed on a compote dish as the text directs, glazed and served cold. It keeps a couple of days refrigerated.

A Little History

The compote in French cookery is fruit poached whole or in pieces in sugar syrup, a technique often traced to the medieval belief that sugar-cooked fruit was more digestible than raw, and that survived into the nineteenth century as the plainest of restaurant sweets. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete professional reference, which is why the recipe assumes a Baume saccharometer, cross-references an apple jelly eighteen entries earlier, and does not bother to say how many people it feeds. The finish is the clever part: nothing is wasted, since the syrup the apples cooked in has drawn out their pectin and is boiled down into the glaze that dresses them. In the book, preserved quinces and stewed bananas sit either side of it.