Bonfire night is more about burning Catholics than haute cuisine and it shows. I’ve always felt for Catholic friends at this time of year, but I am a Jew, and I am told I am oversensitive. It’s also three decades since I made £150 doing ‘Penny for the Guy’ on Hampstead High Street. The last time I went to a bonfire night party it was hosted by a Catholic, and this confused me, until I remembered: she is an English Catholic.
If Christmas is for the goose, and Easter for the hot cross bun, bonfire night has the toffee apple. Because this is a desolate festival, it has neither toffee on the apple – we will get to that – nor, too often, a bonfire. I’m not for burning Guido in effigy like those pyromaniac loons in Lewes, about whom I always think: who will they burn next? But if I go to bonfire night, I want a bonfire, and they are often cancelled because they are dangerous, which is the point of them, and a bonfire night without a bonfire is a Christmas without Christ. The toffee apple suits its festival: you need fire to make it.
As with most famous dishes, the origin of the toffee apple is contested (not as much as better foods, but still). Honey and sugar were used as preservatives in ancient times, and it’s not impossible that sugar was heated to coat the apple. But I like to think wise ancients were more careful of their teeth: a toffee apple can steal a molar and laugh. It’s likely the Victorians knew how to make them, and I found a food blogger who called them a Russian delicacy.
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