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Apples, Newtown
Peel and core four Newtown pippin, or any other kind of sound and ripe apples, cut them in quarter-inch slices, spread four tablespoons raspberry marmalade at the bottom of a baking dish, arrange the apples, one overlapping another crown-shape, over the marmalade, sprinkle with a tablespoon powdered sugar, then pour over a tablespoon rum, half gill claret, tablespoon kirsch and half teaspoon vanilla essence, then set in the oven for twenty minutes, frequently moistening with their juice, remove and serve.
A simple baked apple dish that depends entirely on the apples holding their shape; everything else is a matter of translating the measures and supplying the oven temperature the original omits.
- Half a gill of claretA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 1/4 cup. Claret is the old British and American term for dry red Bordeaux; any dry, unoaked red works.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Bake at 375F, which will soften quarter-inch slices in about the stated twenty minutes without collapsing them.
- Powdered sugarIn books of this period this usually means granulated sugar ground fine, not the cornstarch-laden confectioners' sugar sold today. Ordinary caster or granulated sugar is the closer match.
- Raspberry marmaladeHere marmalade means a thick fruit paste, not a citrus preserve. A seedless raspberry jam is the direct modern equivalent; use four tablespoons spread in a thin, even layer so it does not scorch at the edges.
- Newtown pippinA firm, tart heirloom apple still grown in small quantities. Any apple that holds its shape when baked will do: Braeburn, Granny Smith, Northern Spy or Golden Delicious.
- The bastingThis is the instruction that matters. The recipe says to moisten frequently with the juices: the liquid is shallow and the sugar concentrates fast, so spoon the pan juices over the apples as they bake, or the exposed edges dry and brown.
- Vanilla essenceRead this as vanilla extract. Half a teaspoon against a tablespoon each of rum and kirsch is deliberate restraint; more will flatten the fruit.
- AlcoholTwenty minutes uncovered at moderate heat burns off some but by no means all of the rum, kirsch and wine. The dish stays noticeably boozy.
- YieldFour apples in one dish serve four, warm, on their own or with cream.
Alexander Filippini, long the chef at Delmonico's in New York, compiled The International Cook Book (1906) as a vast alphabetical sweep of dishes, which is why an American apple variety gets its own headword filed under A. The Newtown pippin takes its name from Newtown on Long Island, now part of Queens, where it is generally traced to an orchard in the early eighteenth century; it became one of the first American apples exported in quantity to Britain, prized for keeping well through a sea voyage and a winter cellar. Its dense, acidic flesh is exactly what a dish like this needs, since a softer apple would slump into sauce before the twenty minutes were up. The treatment itself "a fruit preserve beneath, spirits and wine poured over, brief oven heat" is French restaurant practice of the period applied to a homely ingredient, the sort of translation Filippini made his career on.