Gertrude Mackay’s 1913 Recipe for ‘Apples à la Parisienne’

“Pare several sour apples, cut them in half crosswise and remove the cores. Cook them with one cupful of sugar to one cupful of water, taking care to retain the shape. Drain the apples and set each half on a round of stale sponge cake, sprinkled lightly with orange juice and either orange or peach marmalade. Cover the apple with a meringue and some chopped almonds and set in the oven to brown delicately. Serve either hot or cold.”

Gertrude Mackay, Two Hundred and Nine Ways of Preparing the Apple (1913)

Another quick and easy apple recipe from Mrs Mackay today. Once again – as was the case for Gertrude’s recipe for ‘Oxford Apples‘ – it’s an apple / meringue combo, this time involving halved and cored sour apples, by which Gertrude presumably means cookers, rather than dessert types, that are first poached in a sugar syrup.

Each peeled apple half is placed on a round of day-or-three-old sponge cake – I’d guess cut-side down would make for a more pleasing shape – then sprinkled with orange juice, and blobbed with an orange or peach marmalade. The whole thing is then smothered in meringue, scattered with almonds and browned in the oven.

And once again, this does sound rather tasty, but as I’m not a big fan of meringue I probably won’t be trying it out myself. How about you though? Do you like the sound of these “à la Parisienne” apples? Do you think you’d be tempted to give them a go? Do let me know, via the comments.