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Apples in Jelly
Peel halve and core six large apples, make a syrup of one pound of granulated sugar and a pint of water when it boils drop in apples with rind and juice of a lemon; boil until tender. Take the halves out one by one, arrange in a dish; drop a bit of currant jelly in each one; boil the syrup to a jelly; pour around the apples.
A poached-apple dessert that depends on two things: apples that hold their shape and a syrup reduced far enough to set. The original assumes both are obvious.
- The hinge: reduce the syrup properly"Boil the syrup to a jelly" means reducing it to the setting point, around 220F on a candy thermometer, or until a spoonful wrinkles on a cold plate. Poured on too soon it stays a thin syrup and pools under the fruit.
- Where the set comes fromThere is no added pectin here; it comes from the apples and the lemon. Tying the peels and cores in muslin and boiling them in the syrup after the halves are lifted out would give a surer set.
- Apple choiceUse a firm cooking apple that keeps its shape — Braeburn, Granny Smith, Northern Spy, Golden Delicious. A McIntosh or a Bramley collapses into sauce well before the centres are tender.
- Simmer, do not boil"Boil until tender" will break the halves apart. Keep the syrup at a bare simmer, 15 to 25 minutes depending on the variety, and test with a skewer at the thickest point.
- ProportionsOne pound granulated sugar is about 2 1/4 cups; a pint is 2 cups. That is a fairly heavy syrup, which is what keeps the apples firm as they cook.
- The lemon"Rind and juice" means pared strips of zest, not grated peel, so they can be fished out before serving. Take the yellow only; the white pith turns the syrup bitter as it reduces.
- Currant jellyRed currant jelly is still sold, usually near the preserves; it is tart and clear rather than sweet like jam. A firm spoonful goes into each cored hollow while the apples are still warm enough to soften it slightly.
- Yield and servingSix apples give twelve halves, enough for six. Serve cool or cold so the jelly holds, with cream or a thin custard.
Filed here under sauces, which tells you something about how such dishes were classed in the period: sweet stewed fruit sat closer to accompaniments than to what we would now call dessert, and the same apple halves might arrive beside roast pork or alone with cream. The technique is older than the book — poaching pared fruit in a heavy sugar syrup and then reducing that syrup to a glaze runs through eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English cookery. The set draws on the pectin in the apple plus the acid in lemon juice, a reaction cooks exploited for generations before it was named; commercial pectin extract only reached home kitchens in the 1910s, in liquid form. Red currant jelly in the hollows was a common finish, valued for its color and sharpness against the sugar.