PREPARATIONS OF FRUIT, SUGAR, &c.
AN APPLE CHARLOTTE.
Pare and core some fine pippins, and cut them into small pieces. Melt some butter in the bottom of a pan. Then lay your apples in it with a sufficient proportion of sugar, beaten cinnamon or nutmeg, and some rose-water or grated lemon-peel. Set the pan in an oven, and let the apples bake till they are quite soft. Then take them out of the pan, and mash them to a marmalade with the back of a spoon.
Cut some thin slices of bread into a triangular or three-cornered shape, and dip them in melted butter. Then butter a broad deep dish, and lay the pieces of bread in the bottom of it, making the points meet in the centre. Spread a thick layer of apple all over the bread; then more bread, covered with another layer of apple, and so on till the dish is full; having a cover of bread on the top. Set it in the oven, and bake it slowly about a quarter of an hour.
A very fine Charlotte may be made by substituting slices of spunge-cake for the bread, or having square spunge-cakes laid round, leaving a hole in the centre to be filled up with gooseberry jelly. If you use spunge-cake, you need not put it in the oven.
APPLE COMPOTE.
Pare and core some large pippins, but leave them whole. Make a syrup by boiling and skimming a pound of loaf-sugar melted in a gill of water, into which the half of the white of an egg has been beaten. When the syrup is quite clear, boil the apples in it till soft and tender. Then take them out, lay them in a deep dish, and fill up with small sweet-meats or marmalade the holes from whence you took the cores.