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Apple Water
Bake before the fire two or three medium-sized sour apples until soft and richly browned. Put them in a warm pitcher or bowl, add a pinch of salt and a little sugar, if desired, mash and break them until the seeds are released from the cores, then pour a quart of boiling water over them. Cover the pitcher, let stand seven minutes, then strain off the water. Apple water can be used either warm or cold. A great variety of refreshing drinks may be made for invalids by pouring boiling water over crushed fruit, adding a dash of salt and sugar to taste and stirring well together. All fruit preparations may be served hot or cold.
An invalid's drink: baked apple steeped in boiling water and strained. The technique matters more than the measurements, and only two things really need translating for a modern range.
- "Bake before the fire"This means roasting the whole apples in the radiant heat of an open hearth until the skins blister and brown. The recipe gives no temperature or time; in a modern oven, something in the region of 375-400F for 40-50 minutes, until the fruit has collapsed and the skins are dark, is a reasonable substitute, though direct radiant heat browns differently. The recipe does call for the apples to be "richly browned."
- Sour applesNineteenth-century "sour" apples were sharp cooking varieties that break down to fluff. Bramley, Granny Smith or any firm tart apple works; sweet dessert apples give a flat, cidery result and will need more acid.
- QuantitiesA quart is 4 cups (about 950 ml). Two or three medium apples to that much water makes a thin, pale infusion rather than a juice — closer to a tisane than to cider.
- The seven minutesThe recipe is specific about the short steep, and the usual explanation is that longer contact with crushed cores and skins draws out tannin and can make the drink bitter and drying, though the text gives no reason. Strain promptly through a fine sieve or a doubled square of muslin.
- About the seedsApple pips contain amygdalin, generally held to account for their bitterness. The quantity in two or three apples, briefly steeped and then strained out, is not a concern. Note that the recipe asks only that the seeds be released from the cores, not crushed.
- SaltThe pinch of salt is not seasoning in the savoury sense; it sharpens the perception of the fruit and makes a weak infusion taste less watery. Keep it to a genuine pinch.
- Yield and keepingAbout a quart, enough for two to four servings. It has no preservative and should be drunk the day it is made; refrigerate if serving cold.
Apple water belongs to the large body of nineteenth-century "sick-room cookery" -- thin, bland, easily swallowed preparations kept in a warm pitcher by the bed. Barley water, toast water, rice water and the various fruit waters were all made on the same principle: pour boiling water over something mild, let it stand, strain, and serve. Household manuals of the period commonly treated the nursing of an invalid as the cook's business, and many gave the subject its own chapter. The closing sentence here, offering the method for any crushed fruit, is characteristic of the genre: what is being taught is a technique to improvise with, not a fixed formula.