Apfelknödel

An apple dumpling is a baked or boiled pastry-wrapped apple. To prepare apple dumplings, apples are peeled, cored and sometimes quartered and placed on a portion of dough. The hole from the core may be filled with cinnamon, butter and sugar and sometimes dried fruit such as raisins, sultanas, or currants. The dough is folded over the apples and sealed. Sometimes a spiced sauce is poured over the dumplings which are then baked until tender; the sugar and butter create a sweet sauce. Apple dumplings can be served hot, cold, or room temperature for breakfast, dessert, or as a main dish. Boiled apple dumplings are among the earliest of fruit puddings.: 65  They were eaten "at all social levels". In 1726 Nicholas Amhurst complained about apple dumplings at Oxford, saying "nothing can be expected from only rot-gut small beer, and heavy apple-dumplings, but stupidity, sleepiness, and indolence.": 75  Two recipes for apple dumplings were published in Hannah Glasse's 1747 cookbook. In 1749–1750, when botanist Pehr Kalm traveled from New Jersey to Quebec, he reported having apple dumplings at every meal.: 75  In 1754 English agriculturalist William Ellis called them one of the most common foods among farmers, along with bacon and pickled pork. A print called Lesson in apple dumplings or Learning to make apple dumplings, variously attributed to British caricaturists James Gillray in 1792 or Richard Newton in 1797, shows a woman making apple dumplings, watched by a man, possibly King George III. The 1801 domestic encyclopedia Oeconomische Encyclopädie oder Allgemeines System der Land-, Haus- und Staats-Wirthschaft includes instructions for making Apfelklöße, "small apple dumplings." In 1810 English caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson created a colored etching called Puff Paste which shows a footman and cook cuddling while the cook makes apple dumplings. In 1838 American physician William Alcott in his book of advice for young wives The Young House-keeper: Or, Thoughts on Food and Cookery said that "apple dumplings are not very objectionable, except for the crust" as long as no spices were added, but goes on to say, "But why should we have the apple dumpling at all? Few would prepare it, or eat it after it was prepared, were it not for the crust, and above all, for the butter, the sauce, or the sugar added to it; but all of these are objectionable." American cookbook author Eliza Leslie included a recipe for baked apple dumplings in the 1851 edition of her cookbook, in a section called "New Receipts.": 76  In 1870 an apple dumpling dinner was given by the Bethel A.M.E. church in San Francisco. In 1879 Mark Twain included baked apple dumplings on a list of American foods "unmatched by European hotel cuisine".: 76  In 1946 George Orwell was commissioned to write an essay on British Cuisine for an overseas audience, later rejected by the British Council "amid anxiety about postwar austerity", and called out boiled apple dumplings as an example of the "greatest glories of British cookery."

Source: Wikipedia