Home › Fancy Dishes › Apple Souffle (Stew the apples add a little)
Apple Souffle (Stew the apples add a little)
Stew the apples, add a little lemon peel and juice; line the sides and bottom of the dish two inches thick; make a custard of one pint of milk and three eggs; when cold pour it in the middle of the dish. Beat the whites to a stiff froth and spread over the top; Sprinkle a little sugar over it and brown in the oven.
A Victorian "souffle" in name only: a dish lined with thick apple puree, filled with stirred custard and capped with meringue. The original gives no sugar quantity and no oven setting, so both need filling in.
- The hinge: the apples must be stiffA two-inch lining will slump and weep unless the stewed apple is cooked down to a thick, spoon-standing puree, closer to apple butter than to sauce. Stew peeled, sliced tart apples with very little water, uncovered, until no free liquid remains, then cool before lining the dish.
- Sugar is left to youNothing is specified beyond the sprinkle on top. Reckon on 2 to 4 tablespoons in the apples depending on their tartness, 2 tablespoons in the custard, and a scant tablespoon dusted over the meringue for browning.
- Custard proportionsOne pint of milk to three whole eggs is a soft stirred custard. The original is ambiguous: it calls for three eggs in the custard and then asks for the whites, so the yolks alone were probably meant. Use three yolks plus one whole egg, or three yolks with a little cream added, to keep the custard from being thin.
- Cook the custard to temperature, not by eyeStir over low heat or a water bath until it coats a spoon and reads 175-180F. Above about 185F it curdles. "When cold" matters: pouring warm custard into the apple shell softens the lining.
- Lemon peel means zestPare it in strips with no white pith, stew it with the apples, and fish it out before filling the dish, or grate the zest finely and leave it in. The juice of half a lemon is enough for 2 lb of apples.
- Oven for the meringueThe recipe only wants the top browned, not the dish baked. A moderate oven, 325-350F, for 12 to 15 minutes sets three whites through; 425F will color the peaks in 4 or 5 minutes but leaves the interior loose. Beat the whites to stiff, glossy peaks with the topping sugar for stability.
- Dish and yieldA two-inch lining on the bottom and sides plus a pint of custard needs a good-sized deep dish; measure your own rather than trusting a single figure. Serves six, and it is best eaten the day it is made, since the meringue weeps by the second day.
Dishes like this show how loosely the word souffle travelled into English-language household cookery. In French practice a souffle is a base lightened with beaten whites and baked so it rises; here the whites sit on top as a meringue and nothing rises at all, but the name carried the prestige of French cooking. The underlying construction is older and thoroughly English in feel: stewed apple flavored with lemon peel, a boiled custard, and a browned froth of whites recall the earlier apple puddings and the dishes cooks called apple snow, though the resemblance should not be pressed too hard, since snow was usually whites beaten with the apple rather than spread over it. It is also a frugal dish dressed up, using a pint of milk and three eggs to fill a company-sized dish, and it wastes nothing, since the yolks thicken the custard and the whites become the crown.