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Apple Meringue
Peel and core six small, sound apples. Have in a saucepan one quart water with four ounces granulated sugar and half stick vanilla and boil for five minutes; then add the apples and gently cook for twenty minutes. Remove the apples with a skimmer, take up the vanilla, arrange the apples on a baking dish, decorate the top and all around the apples with a meringue, sprinkle a tablespoon powdered sugar over all, set the dish in the oven and bake until of a nice golden colour, or about ten minutes. Remove and serve.
A straightforward poached-apple dessert, but the original assumes you already know how to build a meringue and how hot to set the oven. Both need filling in.
- The meringue is left to youFor six apples, whip three egg whites to soft peaks and beat in about 6 tablespoons of caster or superfine sugar, a spoonful at a time, until the mixture is glossy and holds a firm peak. Pipe or spoon it over and around the fruit.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives none. A moderate oven, around 350F, will colour the peaks in the ten minutes specified; much hotter and the outside browns before the interior sets.
- Dry the apples firstLift the poached apples out and let them drain on a rack for several minutes. Syrup running out under the meringue is the usual cause of a slumped, watery base.
- Half a stick of vanillaThat is half a vanilla pod, split. A teaspoon of extract stirred into the syrup off the heat is the nearest substitute.
- Choose a firm appleTwenty minutes of simmering will reduce a McIntosh or similar soft variety to pulp. Use something that holds shape when cooked, such as Braeburn, Granny Smith or Golden Delicious, and start checking with a skewer at fifteen minutes.
- Powdered sugarProbably what we would now call icing or confectioners' sugar, though in books of this date the term could also mean a finely ground granulated sugar. Sift the tablespoon over the meringue just before baking; it helps the surface take colour.
- The syrup is worth keepingA quart of water with four ounces of sugar makes a light poaching liquid, not a sauce. Boil it down hard after the apples come out and you have a vanilla syrup to pour around the dish.
- YieldSix servings, one apple each. Best served within an hour of baking, while the meringue is still dry on the outside.