Johnny Appleseed.

Tomorrow (September 26) is the birth anniversary of ‘Johnny Appleseed’ (1774-1845) – the famous American nurseryman and enthusiastic apple-tree planter. The real name of this deeply religious, eccentric orchardist was John Chapman, and he truly became a legend in his own lifetime. He was by all accounts generous-spirited and big-hearted. He lived rough - often going about without shoes, even in the snow – as he travelled across large tracts of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois planting apple seeds in small patches of land, and returning later to check on his developing orchards.

From Hannah Glasse’s classic, The Art of Cookery, made plain and easy, published in 1774, the year of Johnny Appleseed’s birth, please enjoy the following wonderful apple recipe in his honour:


To make a Pupton of Apples.
Pare some apples, take out the cores, and put them into a skillet: to a quart-mugful heaped, put in a quarter of a pound of sugar, and two spoonfuls of water. Do them over a slow fire, keeping them stirring; add a little cinnamon; when it is quite thick, and like a marmalade, let it stand till cool. Beat up the yolks of four or five eggs, and stir in a handful of bread and a quarter of a pound of fresh butter; then form it into what shape you please, and bake it in a slow oven, and then turn it upside down on a plate, for a second course.

Rest assured, dear readers, we have not finished with the subject of puptons – a little more will follow next week.


Quotation for the Day.

There's plenty of boys that will come hankering and gruvvelling around when you've got an apple, and beg the core off you; but when they're got one, and you beg for the core, and remind them how you give them a core one time, they take a mouth at you, and say thank you 'most to death, but there ain't a-going to be no core.
Mark Twain, in Tom Sawyer Abroad.