Apple Soup

Ingredients

• 2 lb good boiling apples
• 0.75 tsp white pepper
• 6 cloves
• to taste cayenne or ginger
• 3 quarts medium stock

Method

Peel and quarter the apples, removing the cores entirely — the core fibre will cloud your strainer and spoil the silken finish you're after. The choice of apple matters: use a sharp, firm variety that holds its structure through cooking without collapsing into mush (Bramleys or Granny Smiths are traditional). Soft cookers like Coxes will give you a grainy result instead of the clean purée this soup demands.

Bring the stock to a gentle simmer and add the apples. The stock carries heat unevenly, so stew them at a bare bubble — aggressive heat will fragment the apples and trap pieces in the strainer. You're looking for complete tenderness, which takes roughly 15–20 minutes depending on size. The apples should break apart under gentle pressure from a spoon; if they're still holding their shape, leave them longer. There's no hard clock here — texture is your signal.

Straining is where the work happens. Pass the entire mixture — apples and stock together — through a fine sieve, pressing gently with the back of a ladle to force the soft apple flesh through. Don't pulverise it; steady pressure extracts the purée without grinding cell walls and releasing starch that will make the soup thick and dull. What emerges should be pale gold and completely smooth. This technique, sometimes called stewing through a strainer, creates the body of the soup without cream or flour — the apple solids themselves emulsify into the stock, thickening it naturally.

Taste the base before seasoning. White pepper adds a clean heat without the visual speck of black pepper; the cloves need infusing into the warm soup, so add them now and let them steep for 2–3 minutes before fishing them out with a spoon or tweezers. Taste again. Now add cayenne or ginger to taste — cayenne gives a sharp, lingering burn; ginger offers warmth and complexity. Neither should dominate. Bring the soup to a rolling boil just once to marry the flavours, then serve immediately in warm bowls. The soup splits on standing as the apple solids begin to separate from the stock, so finish and serve without delay.