Apple butter and Snitzing parties

Since many apples were required to make apple butter by the Germans in Pennsylvania, the neighbors would gather to help with the work. Snitz (dried apple slices) was added to cider and cooked down into apple butter or eaten as delicious Schnitz un knepp. Click images to enlarge.

Cider press - wood or stone

William Sidney Mount's 1840 painting of cider making in Setauket, Long Island, NY. Lancaster, Pa. cider presses 1778 and 1800.

Cider making in Devonshire, 1850

An article in the Dec 14, 1850 Illustrated London News described the gathering of apples and the mills for producing cider.  In 1820 over 12,200 hogsheads of Devon cider were shipped, double that amount in 1828.  Farm laborers were given 3 pints a day.    

Lambswool for Halloween night - Nov. 1 "Day of the apple fruit" lamasool

Like wassail, lambswool consisted of ale, roasted apples, sugar and spice and drunk to celebrate the apple.  The Celtic "la mas ubhal, that is, the day of the apple fruit; and being pronounced lamasool" was celebrated on November 1.

Storing apples in Federal America

The father/daughter authors William Cobbett (1763-1835) and Anne Cobbett (1795-1877) each wrote about how Americans stored and transported apples.

Roasted apples street sellers

In winter a pan or container of burning charcoal roasted apples or chestnuts on a tin plate as shown in 1820 by Rowlandson and described in Craig's Cries of London 1804.  Sixty years later "Roasted apples used to be vended in the streets... but it is a trade which has now almost entirely disappeared."

Apple Tansey

Fried apple slices dipped in a batter of eggs, cream, sugar, nutmeg and rosewater or apples chopped fine in a batter thickened with flour are delicious fried.  Tanseys are an old recipe, and appear in cookbooks by La Varenne (1673), Smith (1730) and cooking manuscripts from the 1600s (William Penn's wife and Martha Washington's Custis inlaws - both their apple recipes are delicious).  The herb 'tansey' is no longer used in the recipe, but the name lives on.

How to Cook Apples - over 100 ways - by Georgiana Hill in 1865

The English author Georgiana Hill (1825-1903) compiled recipes from the mundane (apple pie) to unusual - Irish Stew with apples, apples and chocolate, fools, puffs, trifles, omelet, pickled, curry, and sausage with pimiento.  Two American apple recipes - one to cut thin and dry on string, and the other put in jar, cover with sugar and boil the jar and contents.

Apple cider press in 1840s Germany

The lovely long curved oak trough and millstone, apple press, and 'monstrous tuns' were used to turn the "golden apples" into "apple-wine" or cider.  Cows pulled the wagons during the harvest.

Schnitz - dried apple slices, 1749 Schnitz House, schnitz baskets, schnitz un knepp

Schnitz are slices of apples placed on drying racks then put in a slack brick bake oven.  People could gather for 'apple cuts' parties, or in a building such as the Schnitz House. The dried apples were stored in rye baskets in the Lancaster, Pa. area and prepared in pies or Schnitz un Knepp.

Snap-apple Night

Trying to bite into an apple. on a string.  revolving.  with candles.  what could go wrong??  Snap-apple was one of the games played on Halloween in Ireland and Scotland...

Hard Apple Cider

Several heirloom apple orchards offer hard cider workshops.

Halloween - Ducking (Bobbing) for apples

Ducking for Apples