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Florentine Apple Pie
Pare and core 1 pound of fine apples. Stew, but do not let them break in a syrup of 1 pint of water, and 1/2 pound sugar. Fill a dish with a layer of puff paste, arrange the apples inside, with orange marmalade in the centres of each, and a little chopped citron here and there, the syrup boiled down with a spoonful of vanilla, and poured over. Lay strips of paste across, bake, and when cold serve with whipped cream.
A late-Victorian open apple tart built on poached whole apples rather than sliced filling, and it depends entirely on the fruit holding its shape. Everything else is assembly.
- Keep the apples intactThe hinge of the dish is stew, but do not let them break. Hold the syrup at a bare shiver, never a boil, and turn the apples with a spoon rather than stirring; 10-20 minutes depending on size. A firm variety such as Braeburn, Golden Delicious or Bramley cut into halves if they are large will behave better than a soft eating apple.
- The syrupA pint of water to half a pound of sugar is roughly 2 cups water to 1 generous cup sugar - a light poaching syrup, not a candying one. After the apples come out it needs to be reduced hard, to a few tablespoons of thick glaze, or it will flood the pastry.
- A spoonful of vanillaThis could mean vanilla sugar or a vanilla-flavoured syrup as readily as an alcohol-based essence; both were in use by 1900. A tablespoon of modern extract in a small quantity of reduced syrup would be overwhelming; use a teaspoon, or split a vanilla pod into the poaching liquid instead.
- CitronCandied citron peel, the thick-cut confection sold at Christmas, not the fresh fruit and not lemon zest. Chopped candied orange peel is the closest easy substitute if citron is unavailable.
- The pastry basePuff paste under a wet filling goes soggy. Line the dish, chill it hard, and either blind-bake the base briefly before filling or set the dish on a preheated baking sheet so the bottom takes direct heat from the start.
- OvenThe original gives none. Puff paste wants a hot oven: 425F for the first 15 minutes to lift the lattice strips, then 375F for another 20-25 minutes until the strips are deep gold and the base is set.
- GlazingPour the reduced syrup over the apples before the lattice goes on, not after baking. Brush the strips with beaten egg or milk if you want the shine the period expected.
- Yield and servingA pound of apples is only three or so pieces of fruit, enough for a small shallow dish serving three or four. The recipe specifies serving it cold, with whipped cream.
With a Saucepan Over the Sea belongs to a genre of turn-of-the-century American cookbooks that collected dishes gathered, or claimed to be gathered, on European travel, and the names attached to them are geographic gestures more than documented provenance. There is no particular Florentine pastry tradition behind this tart; what it actually shows is the late-Victorian English and American habit of poaching whole fruit in syrup and setting it in a shallow puff-paste case, a technique often traced to French patisserie and applied here to the most ordinary fruit in the larder. The luxuries are the additions - orange marmalade, candied citron, vanilla - goods that signalled a well-stocked kitchen, and all of them doing the work that a foreign name was also meant to do. Serving the tart cold with whipped cream places it firmly as a made-ahead dish for a company table rather than a hot family pudding.