Page:Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.djvu/1138

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Ingredients.—10 small sour cooking apples, 10 ozs. of loaf sugar, castor sugar, ½ a pint of cream, 3 whites of eggs, 1 teaspoonful of lemon-juice, 1 inch of cinnamon, 2 cloves, 10 crystallized cherries, angelica.

Method.—Peel and core the apples carefully without breaking. Place the loaf sugar in a stewpan with ½ a pint of water, the sugar, lemon-juice, cloves and cinnamon, and reduce to a syrup, skimming meanwhile. Arrange the apples in a sauté-pan, pour the syrup round, cover with a buttered paper, and bake gently until tender. Transfer them to a buttered baking-sheet, cover the entire surface lightly with stiffly-whisked sweetened white of egg, by means of a pipe and forcing-bag, and dredge well with castor sugar. Bake in a slow oven until the méringue hardens and acquires a little colour, and let them become quite cold. When ready to serve, whip the cream stiffly, stir in 1 dessertspoonful of castor sugar, pile a little in the centre of each apple, dish each one on a little bed of cream, and serve the remainder in the centre of the dish. Decorate each apple with a cherry and strips of angelica, then serve.

Time.—About 3 hours. Average Cost, 2s. 6d. to 2s. 9d. Sufficient for 7 or 8 persons. Seasonable at any time.

Ingredients.—1 dozen sour cooking apples, 5 ozs. of moist sugar, castor sugar, 1 oz. of blanched baked almonds, 2 whites of eggs, the finely-grated rind of a ½ lemon, 1 pint of water.

Method.—Peel the apples, core 8 of them carefully, and slice the remainder. Place the 8 whole apples in a stewpan with the moist sugar and water, stew gently until tender, then transfer them carefully to a dish. Put the sliced apples into the stewpan, cook them in the syrup until perfectly soft, and beat them to a pulp. Spread a layer of this pulp on a dish, place the whole apples on the top of it, fill the spaces between them with apple pulp, and cover the surface with the remainder, raising it slightly in the centre, in the form of a dome. Whisk the whites of eggs stiffly, sweeten to taste with castor sugar, and spread lightly over the apples. Insert the strips of almonds uniformly, to represent the back of a hedgehog, and serve.

Time.—From 1¾ to 2 hours. Average Cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for 6 or 7 persons. Seasonable at any time.

Ingredients.—6 apples, 6 whites of eggs, 4 or 5 ozs. of castor sugar, the thinly-cut rind of 1 lemon.