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Apple Souffle (Stew the apples and add)
Stew the apples and add a little grated lemon peel and juice, omitting butter; line the sides and bottom of a baking-dish with them. Make a boiled custard with one pint of milk and two eggs, flavoring with lemon and sweetening it to taste.
Let it cool and then pour into the center of the dish. Beat the whites of two eggs to a stiff froth, spread them over the top; sprinkle white sugar all over them, and brown in the oven. The stewed apple should be about half an inch thick on the bottom and sides of the pudding-dish.
A late-Victorian apple charlotte in all but name, written for a cook who already knew how to stew apples and boil a custard. The quantities for fruit and sugar are left to judgment, so read the last sentence first: the apple lining sets the size of the dish.
- Work backwards from the apple layerThe instruction to make the stewed apple about half an inch thick on the bottom and sides is the only real measurement given. For a 1.5-quart baking dish that is roughly 2 lb of apples, peeled, cored and stewed down until thick enough to hold its shape against a vertical side. A loose, wet apple sauce will slump and the custard will run underneath it.
- "Omitting butter"The phrase points back to some standard stewed-apple method, presumably one that enriched the fruit with butter; here it is left out so the apple stays firm and slightly tart against the custard. Stew the apples with only a splash of water, and cook off any excess moisture before lining the dish.
- Boiled custard is not boiledA pint of milk and two whole eggs makes a thin pouring custard, and it must be stirred over gentle heat only until it coats the back of a spoon, around 170-175F. Take it past that and it curdles. A double boiler or a heavy pan over low heat is the safe route.
- Sweetening to tasteFor a pint of milk and two eggs, 3 to 4 tablespoons of sugar in the custard is the usual range. The apples will want their own sugar depending on the variety; a sharp cooking apple such as Bramley or Granny Smith needs considerably more than a dessert apple.
- Cool the custard before it goes inThe recipe says to let it cool and it means it. Hot custard poured against the apple wall will soften it and the layers will merge into one brown mass.
- Browning the meringueThe recipe says only to brown it in the oven. In practice a moderate oven, around 350F, for about 12 to 15 minutes will set and colour the peaks. A hotter oven will colour the top in five minutes but leave the interior of the meringue slack and weeping.
- Sprinkle, do not foldThe sugar goes over the beaten whites rather than into them, which gives the crisp, faintly crackled crust characteristic of these puddings. Roughly a tablespoon of caster or granulated sugar over the surface is enough.
- YieldA dish of this size serves four to six. Serve warm or at room temperature; it does not reheat well, as the meringue collapses.
Despite the name, this is not a soufflé -- nothing that rises -- it belongs to the family of layered apple-and-custard puddings that English and American cookbooks published under a shifting set of names through the nineteenth century: apple charlotte, apple snow, apple meringue, apple trifle. The recipe opens as though the apples were already at hand.