This year St John's members with apple trees enjoyed a bumper harvest, so for the last two Sundays the Green Ginger Group (which runs Earth be Glad) have organised a stall to sell them to the rest of the congregation, raising over £50 for the Environment Agenda postcard campaign.
If you have bought more than you can eat, or picked out some sharp ones, here is an idea for using them from St John's history.
One of the very first mothers to have their child baptised into our congregation, in 1797 when we met in Charlotte Chapel in Rose Street, was Elizabeth Nourse, daughter of a gardener from Hawick. When her husband died in 1805 she not only continued their New Town catering business but expanded it, establishing a school of cookery. In 1809 she published a recipe book, assuring her customers,
there is not one Receipt in the whole book, but such as she is daily practicing; therefore any person the least conversant in Cookery cannot fail to succeed by following her directions.
Her practical experience gave her collection the edge over the many recipe collections being published by "ladies", and Mrs Nourse's Modern Practical Cookery ran to numerous Edinburgh editions, achieved UK distribution, was still in print in 1831, and in 1845 became one of the first recipe books to be published in Canada. It is thanks to Canadian scholars that her collection is now easily accessible digitally.
There are modern Scottish classics ("Macaroni Pie": hers has chicken rather than cheese), New Town canapé staples ("Vol au Vent"), Empire influences ("Curry Soup") and Bakeoff-style showstoppers ("A Custard in Imitation of a Hedgehog", with red and green spikes). This is all the more remarkable when you remember that only twenty years earlier, the height of culinary excellence for the kind of fashionable classes who attended St John's was cock-a-leekie soup and sheep's heid washed down with too much smuggled French claret.
Modern Practical Cookery deserves the attention of a better cook than me, but one recipe I did try out, and liked so much I've made it again and again, was "Apple Pudding". It's a kind of spicy stewed apple custard. It's rich and warming, delicious hot or cold, hugely indulgent but counts as one of your five a day, and very easy to make.
Mrs Nourse's original is not easy to follow: modern eggs, lemons and apples are different sizes, and we don't measure in gills. So after several experiments, here is my modern version:
- 12 St John's apples (or 4 full size Bramleys)
- 40g butter
- 75g sugar
- Lemon
- Cinnamon
- 3 eggs, separated (I've never been enough of a pig to try it with anywhere near eight!)
- 50ml cream
Peel, pare and stew apples in a pan. Beat them well, then stir in butter, sugar, zest and half the juice of the lemon, cinnamon to taste, and beaten egg yolks. Stir in cream. Scatter some sugar on top and bake in a moderate oven for about 1/2 an hour (oven temp and time not at all crucial).
I usually left quite a lot of white in with the yolk to get the eggy thickness without using too many. But you could also make the whites into meringue and spread it on top, cf. Apple Snow...
Do let me know in the comments if you make it, or if you revive any others of Mrs Nourse Regency Edinburgh recipes. Despite their global influences they are great for using local, seasonal produce: Mrs Nourse lived in a world with no rail freight or refrigerators.
You can read more about Mrs Nourse on the St John's Archive website.
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