Biffins

[jackal10]

Thuis is split from the Sous vIde thread.

Does anyone know the time/temperature for cooking apples sous-vide? Any experiences cooking them sous-vide?

I'm trying to reproduce the ancient dish of Biffins where a particular variety of apple was slow baked A recipe of 1882 on how to cook Biffins advises '..Choose Norfolk Biffins with the clearest most blemish free rinds, then lay them on clean straw on baking wire and cover well with more straw. Set them in a very slow oven for four to five hours. Draw them out and press them very gently, otherwise their skins will burst. Return them now to the oven for another hour, then press them again. When cold, rub them over with clarified sugar.'

(http://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/documents/FruitGroupNewsletter03.pdf ) The article adds A successful trade developed each year around Christmas between London fruiterers and Norwich bakers, who cooked the Biffins in their cooling bread-ovens, weighted down with an iron plate to expel excess air.

They were mentioned in Dickens "A Christmas Carol" "Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of oranges and lemons, and in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner", and in his story "The Holly Tree"

""I think a Norfolk biffin would rouse her, Cobbs. She is very fond of them."

Boots withdrew in search of the required restorative, and when he brought it in, the gentleman handed it to the lady, and fed her with a spoon"

Biffin apples, or beefings, have very tough skins, which allows them to be baked whole, and then preserved cold. Apparently when cooked this way they are "creamy with hints of cinnamon and nutmeg".

I have the right variety of apple, but my dilemma is how to cook. If I cook at sous-vide temperatures, I suspect, as Nathan has remarked, I will just end up warm raw apple. The bread oven reference indicates quite hot, which I also doubt, since I think they would burst if they boil.

Im also unsure as to whether the main mechanism is cooking or partial dehydration, or both.

Help!

[Adam Balic]

Jack do you have 'Traditional Foods of Britian: A regional inventory" (if not get it from Prospect Books)?

The say that a modern method for producing beefings/biffens is to place them on a rack at 105C for approximately 5 hours. At this point they are removed from the oven, flattened a little the returned for another hour.

Blackcaps are biffens that are cooked with wine, sugar and spics etc, there are recipes for these in numerous books, but mostly they don't mention the variety to use.

Damn I am jealous of you garden (he says staring at his windowbox).

[nathanm]

A few days before this was posted I decided to try making biffins. I did not have the right kind of apple (Northern Beefing). So, I tried three varieties of apple - one Fuji, one Rome Beauty and one Granny Smith in a combi oven at 175F / 79C on convection with 20% humidity and baked them for 20 hours.

The result was very interesting.

All of the apples shrank a lot, and had lost considerable weight although they were still quite moist inside. Only a few drops of liquid was left on the pan under the apples, so the weight loss was primarily through evaporation.

The Granny Smith was the softest. The texture of the apple was soft and creamy, almost like a creme brulee, but still more stiff than you would expect from apple sauce. It was not fully dehydrated at all, but did not run juice when cut. The flavor was good, but quite tart. The skin was medium thick. The skin was loose and had puffed away from the flesh as the flesh shrank.

The Fuji on the other hand was still fairly hard - you could cut the flesh with a spoon, but only just. It was similar to the texture of a poached pear used in a dessert, but a bit harder. It was much sweeter than the GS and had good flavor. The skin was thin and papery, still adhering to the flesh.

To my surprise the Rome Beauty was the best of the three. This is normally a cooking apple used for apple sauce, so I expected it to disintegrate, but it did not. The texture was intermediate between the Granny Smith and the Fuji - it was soft enough to cut with a spoon, but firmer than the GS. The skin was thick, tough and leathery - it had shrunk down with the flesh so it was highly wrinkled on the outside. I think that this is the soft, "custard like" texture that previous email referred to - a bit stiffer than a creme brulee, a bit softer than a poached pear.

All of the apples tasted more concentrated than one would expect of normal cooked apples, so the dehydration seemed to work.

So, I think that this is a good approximation to a Biffin. Access to the Northern Beefing apple variety would help of course, but it would appear that any Apple can be made biffin like. The Rome Beauty variety was by far the best of the three that I tried. I've never had a real Biffin so it is hard to say how close this is. I suspect that somebody in the relevant part of the UK still makes them - perhaps posting on eGullet would reveal a source.

It is quite possible that at a higher temperature, or longer time, would change these results. I expect that the GS would get too soft at a higher temperature, but the Fuji would probably soften up eventually.

It is entirely possible that higher temp and longer time would have made a more chewy apple chip like texture, but I was not even close to that with 20 hours @ 175F / 79C.

As to the pressing with the iron plate - each of the apples was a bit compressable, particularly the GS and Rome. So one certainly could have pressed them to flatten them, and this may also have made them dehydrate faster

[fifi]

Well . . . You learn something new every day. I recall the Dickens reference and always wondered what a biffin was but quickly forgot to look it up.

Jack, I am thinking that your reference to using a cooling bread oven may indicate a lower temperature like Nathan used. A weight on them for the last hour may not only flatten them but also retard dehydration a bit. I have no idea what I am talking about. I am just trying to think it through.

I would like to have a good description of an "ideal" biffin, if anyone knows what that is.

[jackal10]

Here is my attempt at a Biffin.

I cooked the apple at 90C for about 12 hours.

The result was indeed rich, creamy and delicious, tasting a little of cinnamon and cloves, slightly sharp. Unique.

Curious, since the same apple makes an indifferent apple puree.

I think the cooking process is as much by dehydration as by cooking in the conventional sense. I'm, sure, as Nathan has shown that you could do the same process with different apples to good effect. I suspect the Norfolk Beefing apple was used as it has a particularly thick skin, so would stand the perils of being transported in its cooked state to the London markets.

It made me think that part drying, although a common technique is somewhat under-rated in the new gastronomy. The process both concentrates and changes the flavour, just as mi-cuit prunes taste different to plums, and mi-cuit or sun-dried tomatoes taste different to fresh. I wonder if this could not be used more. We habitually concentrate stocks to meat glace, and occasionally serve jerky. A few chefs use fruits or sauces dried to a powder, but not half-dried. How about semi-dried fruit syrups, or tomato concasse? Maybe there are grounds for experiment here.

[Adam Balic]

Sunblush?semi-dried tomatoes are an exapmple I guess.

Great images BTW.

[nathanm]

I think that coring the apple with a cylindical apple corer might be interesting because it would allow the interior to dehydrate better. They wouldn't have done that in Dicken's day to keep the integrity and prevent spoiling, but I bet it would have a big effect.

[Dan Ryan]

Any more biffin updates?

Jack raises a very interesting point about the use of oven-drying as a flavour-enhancing technique. What else could we apply it to? Ignoring tomatoes, is there any veg that would benefit? Mushrooms maybe (very speculative)? I imagine peppers would just get tough. There are lots of dried persimmons on sale here at the moment, and fruit will definitely work well. Figs and sour cherries spring to mind, but they'll have to wait a good while.

Perhaps pears are the next to try. I'll see if I can get on it.