Recipe of the month: Ella Hall's Sweet Pickled Apples (1920s-1940s)
Like April's Corn Bread, this month’s recipe is drawn from Ella Hall’s manuscript cookbook, which will be available to purchase as a facsimile from the University of Michigan Press in June. One of the first recipes that caught my attention when I read through this book was “Sweet Pickled Apples,” credited to "Mrs. Rhea on Ann St." As Dr. Jessica Kenyatta Walker notes in her forward to the new facsimile, Ella Hall’s notebook functions not just as a collection of recipes, but almost as a kind of neighborhood rolodex.
For many years, Mrs. Hall ran the Fifth Ave. house as a boardinghouse for Black students at the University of Michigan. These lightly pickled apples might well be one of the dishes that students enjoyed at Mrs. Hall’s table.
1 quart good vinegar
3 lbs sugar
A little ground cloves
A little gound cinnamon
Seven pounds of sweet apples
Boil vinegar, sugar and spices for 10 minutes then add apples and boil until tender. If too much vinegar, take apples up and boil vinegar a little longer, then pour over apples.
Ella Hall's recipe only lists vinegar as the sole liquid in the ingredient list. In doing an internet search of modern pickled apple recipes, I found that the vinegar is most often mixed with an equal portion of water, as in these “Quick Pickled Apples” from Food52. I began to think that Mrs. Hall had probably just left water off her ingredient list because she knew it would be equal in amount to the vinegar and her notebook was just to jog her memory.
However, when I did a search of historical recipes for “sweet pickled apples” in Hathi Trust, I was surprised to find that recipes from The Orange Judd Cook Book (1914) and The Modern Priscilla Cook Book (1924) are very specific in their ingredient list and instructions, and they do not include water! Now, this is a limited sample, of course, and another near contemporary cookbook, The Barton Cook Book (1913), does include water. But I ultimately decided to prepare Mrs. Hall’s recipe as written, although I did substantially cut it down in size since 7 lbs would be a couple dozen apples!
I used apple cider vinegar to complement the taste of apples and regular granulated sugar. I also ended up only using 3 apples instead of 5 because the ones I had on hand were super-sized Pink Ladies and I could tell as I was slicing them that the volume of sliced apples was already going to be exceed the volume of vinegar. I decided to follow The Orange Judd Cook Book’s lead and leave the peels on.
After boiling the vinegar, sugar, and spices for 10 minutes, I added the apple slices and simmered for about another 5 minutes. The results were delicious! The apples don’t taste “pickle-y” at all. Instead, the vinegar adds a nice, tart undertone that complements the sweetness of the apples. If you choose one recipe to prepare for yourself from this monthly recipe series, make Mrs. Hall’s Sweet Pickled Apples. It is definitely going into my own recipe notebook.
Reduced Recipe for Sweet Pickled Apples
(from curator Juli McLoone)
