HFF 4.7: April Foolery

The Challenge: April Foolery! Surprise foods, deceptive foods, funny foods, and/or foods with "April" or "Fool" in the name.

[Yes this is late. I didn't have any cream, and am trying to space out my grocery shopping to once every three weeks.]

The Recipe: Apple Fool from The English Cookery Book (copied verbatim in the aptly-named How to Cook Apples, 1865)

The Date/Year and Region: 1859, London (& New York)

How Did You Make It: 

APPLE FOOL. Pare the fruit and either scald or bake it until sufficiently soft to pulp it through a colander; sweeten it agreeably to taste and fill the glasses three parts full with it. Then plentifully sprinkle in some cinnamon and cloves in powder, put a good layer of rich scalded cream, and sift white sugar upon the top 

I decided to make a small batch, peeling three small gala* apples and chopping them up fine, since the object is to boil them down to a pulp. I set them on the stove, over medium-high heat, in a covered saucepan with a little water. When they boiled, I turned the heat down to med and then low, and let them simmer for a bit over 3 hours, adding small amounts of water as needed. At the end of that time, the apple pieces were transparent. They turned to mush at the slightest pressure. 

I put 6 Tbsp of whipping cream on the stove in a small pan on medium heat.

I gently mashed the apples, then attempted to put them through a sieve. That task was abandoned, as there were no lumps in the apples and the process was taking a long time. I placed the apple much into two glasses, sprinkled them with ~1/16 tsp of cloves and ~1/16 tsp of cinnamon over the two. I then poured the cream over the apples, and sprinkled 1/2 Tbsp of granulated sugar over the two glasses.

Time to Complete: ~3:30 About 15-20 minutes of this was actual work; otherwise the apples were stewing on med-low heat while I made/ate dinner and cleaned up the kitchen.

Total Cost: About $2.75, for three small apples and 6 Tbsp cream.

How Successful Was It?:  The presentation could be better, but it's fairly tasty and doesn't look awful. The cloves predominated, so I might go more lightly on those in the future, but overall I found the flavors tasty and well-balanced. The apples were fairly sweet on their own, so that's something to keep in mind in the future (may want to adjust the amount of sugar depending on apple tartness). Ultimately, it's tasty and fairly straightforward, and could be quite pretty if I practice the cream step: I could see myself making this again in the future for private dining or for a public demonstration.

How Accurate Is It?: I'd like to try making this with some heritage apples, but generally I'd say it's accurate. I used an electric stove, but it doesn't differ that much from how I'd use a wood-burning stove to the same effect. The 'scalded' cream did end up bubbling a bit, so I'm not sure if that should have happened or not.

Apple Fool: reasonably tasty.

*I looked at several recipes, and where they specified, it was always a 'stewing apple', ie, one that will break down easily (as opposed to a 'baking apple' that will hold its shape). Unfortunately, every list of modern apple types that I could find by these categories either 1) included no apple varieties I recognized (very odd, living in the apple capital of the US, we have tons of varieties!), or 2) included every variety I know of--and then some--on both lists as 'will hold its shape' and 'absolutely will not hold its shape'. Very edifying. I ended up just grabbing the ones I like to eat.