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Apple Tea
Wash and cut a good sour apple, cut it into small pieces and boil it in a cupful of water, until it is soft, then strain the water into a bowl, add a bit of sugar, and serve when cold. If the apple is of a good flavor, this is a pleasant drink, and may be given to fever patients, and children.
A single-serving invalid drink, essentially a thin apple infusion. The only variable that matters is the apple itself.
- Apple choiceA "good sour apple" means a sharp cooking variety — Bramley, Granny Smith, Rhode Island Greening. Modern dessert apples bred for sugar give a flat, cidery liquid with nothing to balance it.
- Leave the peel onThe recipe says wash and cut, not pare. Much of the colour, and some of the aroma, sits in the skin, so cut the apple into thin pieces with peel and all and only discard the core.
- CupfulTake this as 8 fl oz. One apple to a cup of water makes a single glass, so scale up if you want more.
- Simmer, do not hard boilSimmer rather than hard boil -- The recipe says boil, but "until it is soft" need be no more than about 10 to 15 minutes at a gentle simmer, covered. A rolling boil drives off water and the volatile apple aroma with it.
- StrainingStrain through a fine sieve without pressing the pulp, or the drink turns cloudy and gritty. Cheesecloth gives the clearest result; the leftover pulp is edible as a small portion of unsweetened sauce.
- Sugar and serving"A bit of sugar" is a teaspoon or so, added while the liquid is still hot so it dissolves. Chill before serving, as directed — served warm it reads as weak stewed fruit rather than a drink.
Apple tea belongs to the large class of nineteenth-century "invalid cookery" — beef tea, barley water, toast water, arrowroot gruel — thin nourishing liquids intended for the sick, the convalescent and small children, at a time when household nursing was common. Books of this period often folded sickroom recipes in among the family fare rather than segregating them. The reasoning behind it was sound enough even without modern nutritional language, since a mildly acid, lightly sweetened liquid is palatable to a feverish patient and supplies fluid and a little sugar. What the recipe does not carry is any medical authority; the advice to give it to "fever patients" reflects household custom, not treatment.