Apple Dish (Pomada)

http://www.fridayvalentine.com/rafaella/kingdom_AS/spanish_food.pdf

Recipe #16. Apple Dish (Pomada)

Take apples which should be sour and sweet, and quarter each of them; and peel them, and remove the core; and then put them in cold water, and if they are very sour give them a boil; and then take peeled almonds and grind them well; and put the apples in the mortar and grind them together with the almonds very vigorously; and when they are well-ground, blend it all with good hen's broth and strain it all through a woolen cloth; and put everything in the pot where it must cook; and take ginger which is fine, peel off the skin until it is white, and make of it little pieces the size of half a finger; and put them to soak the night before in good rosewater until the morning; then take whole cinnamon, and tie it with a thread together with cloves and scald them with hot broth and when the cloves and the cinnamon are scalded, put the pot on the fire with the apples; and put a good quantity of sugar in it, and when it is more than half cooked, take the soaked ginger and cloves and cinnamon; and put them all in the pot, and if it does not taste enough of ginger, put in a little which is ground until the sauce tastes of ginger; and when it is cooked you will cast the rosewater in the pot; and prepare dishes; on top of them cast sugar, and cinnamon if you wish.

My Redaction:
5 each Apples, medium, Granny Smith & Red Delicious
3 Cinnamon sticks 
2 tsp Cloves, whole
2 cups Almonds, whole plain 
2 tsp Ginger, powdered
3” pc. Ginger, fresh 
½ cup Dark brown sugar
2 oz. Rosewater 
1 tsp Cinnamon, powdered
~17oz. Chicken broth

Peel fresh ginger and mince; soak overnight in rosewater. Peel, core, and quarter apples. Put apples in
pot and cover with water. Boil until not quite soft. Drain and mash with a potato masher. Blanch almonds and remove peels. Grind almonds finely in food processor. Add apples to almonds and pulse in food processor, adding chicken broth slowly. Drain fresh ginger from rosewater. Put minced ginger, whole cloves, and broken up whole cinnamon sticks into a cup. Cover with hot chicken broth, let steep. Sieve and remove cloves and cinnamon. Add minced ginger and broth to food processor. Blend all together until smooth. Add sugar (if desired). Add powdered ginger (to taste). Finish with powdered cinnamon.
Serve warm or cold.

Recreation Notes:
This recipe isn’t written in the order of cooking. It must be analyzed thoroughly before cooking, or one could easily miss the overnight pre-preparation of the ginger. In the test cook, I cut the fresh  ginger pieces into larger slivers and it didn’t go over well with the tasters. The minced ginger has a nicer texture and spreads the rosewater through the applesauce more. I did not add more rosewater as this was enough for my taste (I don’t care for rosewater and a little of it goes a long way).
In period, huge mortars and pestles were also used to grind or mash food. The apples were soft enough that I used a potato masher on them and then I used the food processor to grind the almonds. It may be that in period the almonds were reduced to a paste-like consistency.
Although I used dark brown sugar, white sugar was available in period (if expensive). Colors of sugar
depended on where it came from and what the processing/refining was like in that area. Egyptian sugar was white due to refining and Fleming states, “From the 13th to the 15th centuries, Egyptian sugar was the preferred kind with Venice serving as the middleman. Common in Italy and Spain, sugar remained a luxury in the more northern European countries for many years.” (20)
I also decided to remove the whole cloves and whole cinnamon to give the applesauce a clean look. This recipe is very similar to other period applesauce for feast day recipes with addition of a meat broth.
Recipe #168. Mirrauste Of Pears[…] is much the same recipe using pears but no ginger is included. An interesting variation would be to include pears in this recipe.