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Bird's Nest Pudding
3 eggs, 3/4 cup flour, 6 tablespoons Crisco, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup blanc-mange, pinch baking powder, pistachio nuts or cocoanut, angelica and apricot jam.
Break eggs into basin, add sugar to them, and beat over saucepan of hot water until mixture is consistency of thick cream. Melt Crisco; sieve flour and baking powder together. Stir Crisco and flour quickly and lightly into egg mixture, turn into well-criscoed mold, and bake in a moderate oven for 15 to 20 minutes. Turn out when done, and let the cake get cold. Rub some apricot jam through a hair sieve, put a thin layer of this over the cake, roll it either in chopped pistachio nuts or desiccated cocoanut. Stand on a dish. Have ready some blanc-mange eggs, fill the center with these, and arrange round the base of the nest some pieces of angelica to represent twigs. It is now ready to serve. The blanc-mange eggs are made by either filling some egg-molds with blanc-mange, or by emptying out some eggs, and using the shells. The eggs must be emptied through as small a hole as possible. When set, the shells are broken away carefully.
This is a genoise sponge dressed as an Easter centerpiece, from one of the cookbooks Procter & Gamble commissioned to sell Crisco. The batter is the fussy part; the decoration is assembly.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirThe eggs and sugar are whipped over hot water to the ribbon stage, and that foam does most of the lifting; the recipe adds only a pinch of baking powder. Sift the flour over the surface and fold it in with a spatula in a few decisive strokes, then add the melted Crisco (warm, not hot) in a thin stream down the side of the bowl. Beating it in deflates the foam and gives a dense, tough cake.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as about 350F. A thin genoise of this size is done in the 15 to 20 minutes the recipe states; it should spring back and pull slightly from the edge of the mold.
- CriscoStill sold, still works. Any neutral solid shortening or clarified butter substitutes; butter gives better flavor and a shorter shelf life. "Well-criscoed mold" means the mold well greased with Crisco.
- The moldNo size is given. A 7- to 8-inch ring mold or a shallow round cake pan both work; the ring gives you the hollow nest without carving. If you bake it flat, hollow the center with a paring knife once cold.
- Blanc-mangeA set milk pudding, thickened with cornstarch (or gelatin for a firmer set). You need it stiff enough to unmold as an egg, so use the upper end of the thickener in whatever recipe you follow, and count on about 1/2 cup for the nest plus extra for what breaks.
- Eggshell molds and hygieneIf you use blown-out shells rather than metal egg molds, scald or boil the empty shells before filling them, and pour the blanc-mange in hot. Raw shell exterior is the usual place salmonella sits, and here the shell is in direct contact with something no longer going to be cooked.
- Angelica and pistachiosCandied angelica stems are the green "twigs"; they are still made but scarce, and thin strips of candied citron or green candied peel do the same job. Use unsalted, unroasted pistachios and chop them yourself so they read as moss rather than snack nuts.
- Hair sieveAny fine-mesh strainer. Warming the apricot jam slightly makes it push through easily and it will spread thinner and set tackier, which is what holds the nuts on.
- YieldNo yield is given; a cake built on three eggs will serve roughly six. Best assembled the day it is eaten; the jam layer softens the sponge overnight and the coconut goes limp.
"Bird's nest pudding" is an old name attached to at least two unrelated dishes: in nineteenth-century American cookbooks it usually means whole cored apples baked in custard or batter, the apples sitting in their nests. This is the other kind, the confectioner's conceit, in which a sponge is coated to look like a nest and filled with mock eggs, a form associated with Easter tables. Its appearance here, with Crisco in the sponge and in the greasing of the mold, is the point: A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and issued by Procter & Gamble in the years after Crisco went on sale in 1911, when the company was working to persuade cooks that a hydrogenated vegetable shortening could stand in for butter and lard everywhere, including in a cake meant to be the centerpiece of a holiday meal.