Sir Théodore Turquet de Mayerne’s 1658 Recipe for ‘Apple Cream’
“Boil six Pippins pared, (doe not cut the cores apieces) in Claret wine, a little more than will cover them, put in of sugar a good quantity, then boil a quart of good cream, with a little rosemary and thyme, sweeten it with sugar, one spoonful of sack, when they be cold put them together, lay your Apples like Eggs : Remember to boil in your Apples some ginger, lemmon pils very thin sliced”
Sir Théodore Turquet de Mayerne (accredited), Archimagirus Anglo-Gallicus (1658)
I think after the rich stodge of December we could all do with something a little lighter but still spicy and sweet to tantalise our palates, no? How about this recipe for ‘Apple Cream’, which the publisher of the 1658 work in which it’s found accredited to Sir Théodore Turquet de Mayerne, physician to Kings James I/VI and Charles I.
Essentially it’s a dish of wine-poached apples – peeled, but not cored – with a herb-infused, lightly sweetened, sherried cream poured over the top. Don’t forget to add the ginger and “lemmon pils” – lemon peel – when you poach the apples though. A handy reminder there to read the whole recipe before you launch in.
What do you think? Does this sound like a wintry warmer fit for a monarch or two? Do let me know, via the comments.
Update, Three Hours Later: Okay, this is interesting. I’ve been re-formatting some older posts to work with the new website theme, and in the process I re-discovered François Pierre La Varenne’s 1673 Recipe for ‘Apple Cream’. This recipe, which dates from fifteen years after the publication of de Mayerne’s is all-but identical, although nutmeg is preferred to rosemary and thyme in the cream.
I wonder which actually came first. Could La Varenne have been inspired by de Mayerne’s recipe, or did the publisher of Archimagirus Anglo-Gallicus re-print an older piece from La Varenne and re-credit it to de Mayerne? Intriguing.
would the pippin be the now named Allington Pippin?
Hi Lesley – Well, these days ‘Pippin’ is quite a common apple name, usually indicating a variety that has been grown from seed. So ‘Allington Pippin’ would be one, but there are many other ‘pippin’ apples, including ‘Cox’s Orange Pippin’, of course.
It’s harder to say for sure whether ‘pippin’ meant the same thing in the seventeenth century, or just indicated a sweet dessert apple. The most highly regarded ‘pippin’-type back then was ‘Golden Pippin’, and whilst there is still an apple by that name in the National Fruit Collection it may or may not be exactly the same variety, as ‘Golden Pippin’ was said to have all but died out at the start of the nineteenth century, or that the fruit that was available then was a pale imitation of the original. So it would all depend on the provenance of the tree in the Collection. It would be an interesting variety to look into. I think I’ll add it to the research list.