Miss Parloa's kitchen companion

Put the water and sugar in a saucepan, and boil for a quarter of an hour ; then add the lemon juice, nutmeg, and apples. Cover the stew-pan, and set it where its contents will cook slowly for forty minutes ; then remove the pan from the fire, and take up the apples, being careful not to break the pieces, and to avoid taking up the syrup. Return the saucepan to the stove, and boil rapidly, for five minutes, the syrup that remains ; then pour it over the apples, and set them away to cool. At serving-time drain the cream well, and sprinkle the powdered sugar over it, stirring gently in order that the two may get well mixed. Heap the cream upon the cold stewed apple, and serve at once. *Iced Apples. Pare, core, and cook apples in syrup, as when they are crystallized. Put them in the oven without the coating of sugar, and bake for fifteen minutes. Now cover them with a thin layer of meringue. Sift granulated sugar over this, and brown it slightly, leaving the oven door open. Let the syrup in which they were stewed boil until there is only about a gill and a half left. Add a few drops of dissolved cochineal. Stir well, and pour into a soup-plate. When this liquid becomes cold it will be a firm jelly. Cut it in squares, and decorate the tops of the apples with it. Serve soft custard or cream with the apples. * Crystallized Apples. Put one cupful of sugar and two of water into a stewpan, and on the fire. Boil for five minutes. Now put into the pan as many pared and cored whole apples as you can without crowding. Cook very gently until the fruit becomes tender, yet not so long as to break it; fchen take it from the syrup, and place it in a shallow baking-pan. Continue in this way until eighteen apples have been stewed. Now sprinkle granulated sugar thickly over the apples, and then put them in a moderately hot oven. Be careful that they do not get scorched. When the sugar becomes slightly browned, remove the apples from the oven, and arrange them on a flat dish. Boil the syrup in which they were cooked until there is only a gill and a half left. Pour this round, but not over, the apples. When it is cold, put the fruit in a glass dish, taking up a circle of jelly with each one. Place a bit of currant jelly on the top of each apple, and serve. •* Glazed Apples with Cream. For a dozen large apples use a cupful and a half of sugar and a cupful and a half of water. Put one cupful of the sugar in a saucepan with the water, and boil rapidly for twenty minutes. Pare and core the apples, keeping them whole. Put them in deep earthen plates or shallow cake-pans, and put a teaspoonful of sugar in the centre of each apple. Baste the outside of each apple with about half a table-spoonful of the hot syrup. Place the pan in a moderately hot oven, and bake the fruit until it is tender, basting frequently with the syrup. When the apples are done, place them on a flat dish, and pour over them the juice from the pan in which they were baked. Serve cold, with a bowl of whipped cream. * Coddled Apples.