Jellied Apples
Peel and core firm tart apples. Put them over the fire in just enough water to cover them, sprinkling them generously with white sugar. Cook slowly at the back of the fire until the apples are tender. Take them out with a split spoon. Bring the liquid left from them to a boil and add to it a tablespoonful of gelatine which has been soaked for half an hour in a very little cold water. When this is dissolved, pour all over the apples, which should have been arranged nicely. Let them become ice cold before serving them. Eat with cream, whipped or plain.
A straightforward poached-apple dessert set in its own syrup. The two things the original leaves vague are the amount of sugar and the strength of the gelatine, and both are worth settling before you start.
- Gelatine strengthA tablespoon of granulated gelatine is a little more than one modern envelope (an envelope is about 7 g, or 2 1/4 teaspoons), and an envelope sets about 2 cups of liquid to a soft, spoonable jelly. If your poaching liquid has reduced to a cup or less, use half an envelope or the syrup will be rubbery.
- Bloom it, then dissolve off the heatSoak the gelatine in a few tablespoons of cold water for the full half hour, then stir it into the hot syrup after the boil has subsided. Prolonged hard boiling can weaken gelatine's setting power.
- "The back of the fire"On a wood or coal range this was the coolest zone. On a modern hob it means the barest simmer, with the surface just trembling. Whole peeled apples fall apart at a rolling boil.
- Apples and timingFirm tart cooking apples hold their shape best; Bramley collapses, while Granny Smith, Northern Spy or Braeburn stay intact. Whole cored apples take 15 to 25 minutes depending on size, and are done when a skewer passes through with slight resistance.
- Sugar"Generously" is unhelpfully open. Start with about 3/4 cup per 2 lb of apples, taste the syrup once the fruit is out, and add more before you introduce the gelatine.
- "Split spoon"A slotted or perforated spoon. Lift the apples whole and set them upright in the serving dish, cored side up, so the syrup pools inside them.
- Cooling and setting"Ice cold" meant an icebox or a cold larder; three to four hours in the refrigerator will set the jelly firm. Do not freeze it, as gelatine weeps on thawing.
Jellied fruit desserts like this one belong to the moment when gelatine stopped being a kitchen project and became a packet. Through most of the nineteenth century a cook wanting jelly boiled down calves' feet or bought sheet isinglass, both of which needed clarifying and long labour; the spread of packaged granulated gelatine had made a set dish something a household could produce on a weekday, and cookbooks of the period are full of recipes that simply add "a tablespoonful of gelatine" to a liquid that would once have been served loose. The apples themselves are older than that: poaching tart fruit in sugar syrup and serving it cold with cream is standard English and American practice back into the eighteenth century, and the gelatine here does nothing but hold the syrup in place around the fruit.