Today in Lillian's Kitchen (click here to read about the real woman named Lillian), we are going to learn to make Apple Jonathan.

Very often in nineteenth century cookbooks, there were no measurements like there are in modern cookbooks because there was no sense of standard protocol. Cooking techniques were passed down from mother to daughters and so forth, and were done with individual methods. Cups were typically measured by actual teacups, which were all different sizes. It was not the exact science as it is today, but at the same time, domestic living was so much more practiced and women had the ability to easily eyeball their ingredients. It was certainly not uncommon for a woman to be able to look at vaguely written instructions in a cookbook and use methods she learned from her own foremothers to create something ideally similar, if not just like the intended result in the recipe.

This particular recipe came from The Complete Home published in 1879. A few notes regarding this recipe. A pudding dish was like what a pie dish is today. Puddings in the nineteenth century were not the little cups of chocolate goo sold in grocery stores today. They were everything from what we consider pot pies with meats, vegetables, gravy, etc., to sweeter treats that looked like regular sugary custards and such. Paste was like a flat dough that could be savory or sweet depending on the recipe.


Line the sides of only a pudding dish with some nice paste, and fill it full of juicy, tender apples, peeled and sliced, with a little water to keep them moist. Cover the top of the dish with paste and bake until the apples are soft, then remove the crust and mash the apples while hot, adding sugar, butter, grated nutmeg and a little flavoring if desired. When cool, serve with rich cream, sweetened, flavored and whipped to a stiff froth, or the cream may be used without whipping. Either way the dish is delicious.