Modes of Preparing Apples for the Table

Pippins are the best apples for cooking.

1. Put them in a tin pan, and bake them in a reflector or stove, or
range oven, or a Dutch oven. Try them with a fork, and when done, put
them on a dish, and if sour fruit, grate white sugar over them. Sweet
ones need to bake much longer than sour. Serve them in a saucer with
cream, or a thin custard.

2. Take tart and large apples, and peel them; take the cores out with
an apple corer, put them in a tin, and fill the openings with sugar,
and a small bit of orange or lemon peel, or a bit of cinnamon. Scatter
sugar over the top, and bake till done, but not till they lose their
shape. Try with a fork.

3. Peel large tart apples, and take out the cores with the apple corer.
Put them in a Dutch oven, or preserving kettle, and simmer them till
cooked through. Then take them out and put into the kettle a pint of
the water in which they were boiled, and beat the white of an egg and
stir in. Then throw in three or four cups of nice brown sugar, and let
it boil up, and skim it till clear. Then put in the apples, and let
them boil up for five minutes or more. Then put them in a dish for tea,
and serve with cream if you have it; if not, take a pint or pint and a
half of rich milk in a sauce-pan, and beat up two eggs, and stir in and
cook it in a tin pail in boiling water, and serve it like cream to eat
with the apple.

4. Peel large tart apples, put them in a tin pan with sugar in the
openings, and bits of lemon or orange peel, or cinnamon, to flavor and
scatter sugar over. Bake till soft, then put them in a dish, and pour
over them a custard made of four eggs and a quart of milk.

5. Peel tart apples, and grate them in a dish, and grate in as much
stale bread. Beat up two eggs in a pint or pint and a half of milk, and
make it quite sweet, and flavor with rose water, or grated lemon, or
orange peel, and pour it in and mix it well. Then bake it, and eat it
either as a pudding for dinner, or as an article for the tea-table, to
be eaten cold and with cream. If you have quinces, grate in one-third
quince, and add more sugar, and it is a great improvement. Various
berries can be stewed and mixed with bread crumbs, and cooked in this
way.

6. Peel apples (or prepare any other fruit), and put them in layers in
a stone or earthen jar with a small mouth. Intermix quinces if you have
them. Scatter sugar between each layer in abundance. Cover the mouth
with wheat dough, and set the jar in with the bread, and let it remain
all night, and it makes a most healthful and delicious dish. Some place
_raw_ rice in alternate layers with the fruit. Children are very fond
of this dish thus prepared with rice, and it is very little trouble,
and nothing can be more healthful.

7. Peel and core apples (or take peaches, or pears, or damsons), and
allow half a pound of sugar to a pound of fruit. Clarify the sugar, by
adding water and the beaten white of an egg, and stirring and skimming
it. Boil the fruit in the syrup all day very slowly, mashing and
stirring often, till it is a thick, smooth paste. If it has skins in
it, it must be strained through a colander. Put it in buttered pans to
cool. Then lay it in a dry, cool place. It can be cut in slices for the
tea-table. Quinces make the best. Apples, with the juice and some of
the peel of lemons or oranges, are fine. This is called _Fruit Cheese_.

8. Boil down new sweet cider to one half the original quantity. Stew
peeled and cored apples, with one quarter as many quinces, in this
cider, till it is a very dark color. If well boiled, it will keep a
year in jars, and is called _Apple Butter_.

9. The following mode of cooking _dried fruits_ is the best. Take dried
peaches, quinces, or apples, and put them to swell in cold water for
several hours. Peaches must be _very_ thoroughly washed. Then put them
into a stewing kettle, with a _great deal_ of water, and a pint of
brown sugar to each pound of fruit. Cover them, and let them simmer
_very slowly_ for several hours, till the water is boiled down to as
much liquid as you wish.

Peaches have a finer flavor when dried with the skin on, as _fully_
ripe peaches cannot be pared and dried. When finely flavored, peaches
have a solid pulp; when ripe they should be _pared_ and then dried, and
such are much the best for cooking in the above way.

They will, when cooked thus, be preferred by every body to the finest
and most expensive sweetmeats.

10. The following is the best and cheapest method of making the finest
_Apple Jelly_. Grapes and damsons can be made the same way.

Take the best pippins, and wipe them, taking out stem and eye. Cut them
in thin slices, without paring or quartering, as the chief flavor is in
the peel, and the jelly part is in the cores.

Put them in a preserving kettle, and put in just water enough to cover
them, and boil them very soft. Then mash and strain through a jelly-bag
made of coarse flannel. Put the liquid into the kettle, with a pint of
brown sugar to each pint of the liquid, and add the juice and rind of
a lemon cut in slices. Beat up the white of one egg, and stir in very
thoroughly. Boil up three times, throwing in some cold water to stop it
from running over. Then let it stand quiet on the hearth half an hour.
Try it, and if not hard enough, let it boil till it will turn to jelly
on cooling. Then skim off the scum, and pour off the clear jelly, and
strain the sediment through the jelly-bag. Then put it in glasses. It
can be boiled down, and make elegant apple candy.

Grapes and damsons should have water put in when first boiled, as the
flavor is thus more perfectly extracted. Frost grapes make an elegant
jelly, as do the wild plum, by this method. In summer these jellies are
fine for effervescing drinks, with some good wine vinegar mixed with
them.