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Apple Turnovers
These are made by the farmers' wives at harvesting. Boil as many green apples as needed with sugar to taste, cinnamon, some butter, and the juice of a lemon. Make some good paste, roll it thin, cut in squares, fill with this, boiled thick, and fold in triangles. Dust them with sugar, and bake until brown. Eat them with cream, hot or cold.
A farmhouse recipe recorded without a single measurement, which is normal for field food made in quantity. The one thing to get right is the filling: it must be cooked down until it holds its shape on a spoon, or the pastry will leak and the sugar will burn on the sheet.
- "Green apples"Most likely hard, tart cooking apples rather than unripe windfalls, though at harvest the literal sense cannot be ruled out. Bramley, Granny Smith or any firm acid apple works; sweet dessert apples will collapse into something bland and watery.
- Cooking the fillingPeel, core and chop, then cook with sugar, cinnamon, a knob of butter and lemon juice over low heat until the fruit breaks down and the mixture mounds on the spoon with no free liquid. Cool it completely before filling; warm filling melts the fat in the pastry.
- "Good paste"Most likely a plain shortcrust or a rough puff: flour, cold butter or lard, a little salt, ice water. Roll thin, about 1/8 inch, and cut squares of 4 to 5 inches.
- SealingBrush two edges with water or egg wash, fold to a triangle, press with a fork and cut a small vent. Chill the assembled turnovers 20 minutes before baking so they hold their shape.
- OvenThe original says only "bake until brown". A hot oven, roughly 400-425F for 20-25 minutes, is a reasonable modern equivalent; bake until the pastry is set and colored underneath as well as on top.
- The sugar dustingSugar applied before baking will caramelize and can scorch. Dust lightly before baking if you want a crackled top, or brush with egg wash and sugar the turnovers as they come out of the oven.
- Quantities and yieldRoughly 1 1/2 lb apples, 1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar and a teaspoon of cinnamon fills about eight turnovers from a 12 oz batch of pastry. Adjust sugar to the apples, as the original intends.
- Serving"Eat them with cream" most likely means pouring cream rather than whipped: a jug of cream at the table. The recipe allows them hot or cold.
Turnovers belong to the long tradition of hand-held pastries made for people eating away from a table -- harvesters, miners, field hands -- where the crust is the plate and the wrapper both. This version is presented as farm food made during harvest, when apples and labor coincided. The name is literal: the paste is turned over the filling. The instructions here give proportions for nothing at all and simply tell the cook to sweeten to taste and boil the fruit thick, leaving the detail to a cook expected to already half know the method.