Home › The World's Kitchen › German Apple Pie
German Apple Pie
Lightly butter a straight-edged pie plate and roll out on a lightly floured table a quarter pound pie paste to the size of the plate. Line the plate with paste, press it down at the bottom and sides, trim off at the edges and sprinkle two tablespoons apple jelly at the bottom. Peel, core and cut in halves four good-sized apples, then finely slice them, place in a bowl with half teaspoon vanilla essence and one ounce powdered sugar, mix well, nicely arrange apples over jelly, set in oven for fifteen minutes, then remove to oven door. Place in a bowl two fresh eggs, one ounce sugar, a few drops vanilla essence and two gills cold milk, sharply whisk for one minute, then strain through Chinese strainer over pie; reset in oven for fifteen minutes, remove, let rest for ten minutes and serve.
A shallow apple custard tart rather than a double-crust American pie. The original gives no oven temperature at all, and the custard is what decides whether it succeeds.
- Oven temperatureNothing is stated, which was normal for a professional book written for cooks with a range in front of them. Bake the fruit at 400F, then drop to 325-350F once the custard goes in; a hot oven will curdle it and blister the surface.
- "Remove to oven door"Most likely an instruction to set the pan on the open oven door, or at the cooler front of the oven, to hold it warm while you mix the custard. A warm spot on the stovetop does the same thing, and it helps: the milk goes in cold, so a cold shell and cold apples will take longer than the stated fifteen minutes.
- Two gillsA gill is a quarter pint, half a cup in American measure (an imperial gill is 5 fl oz), so two gills is about a cup of milk to two eggs. That is a soft, barely-set custard by modern standards; whole milk or half milk and half cream gives a firmer slice.
- Weights of sugar and pasteOne ounce of powdered sugar is about two tablespoons; a quarter pound of pie paste is roughly 4 oz of dough, enough to line an 8- or 9-inch tin thinly. "Powdered sugar" in this period usually means finely ground granulated, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today, though either dissolves into the apples.
- Straight-edged pie plateNot a sloping American pie dish but a straight-sided flan ring or tart tin, so the custard sits level and the crust edge stands up. A loose-bottomed tart tin is the closest modern equivalent.
- Chinese strainerA chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer. Straining catches the chalazae and any stringy white so the baked custard is smooth; a fine sieve is fine.
- DonenessFifteen minutes is optimistic unless the tart went in warm. Bake until the custard is set at the edge with a faint wobble at the centre, around 170-175F internally, then let it rest the full ten minutes so it firms as it cools.
- Apples and yieldUse a firm baking apple that holds its slices, not a sauce apple. One tart, six modest servings.
What German and Austrian bakers call Apfelkuchen covers a range of shallow apple tarts, and the version here, fruit under a thin baked custard, belongs to the same family as Alsatian tarte aux pommes and the Swiss apple flan. That it appears in a book organised by national kitchens is characteristic of the era: American hotel and restaurant cooking around 1900 is often said to have been staffed and taught in large part by European chefs, and cookbooks of the period gathered their dishes under national labels for readers who would never see the countries. The professional habits show through in the writing, in the chinois, the quarter pound of paste weighed rather than measured, and the assumption that a cook knows what heat to use without being told.