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Apple Hedgehog, Iced
Dissolve in a well-lined saucepan eight ounces of good sugar with half a pint of water, and stew in the syrup until tender a dozen or more good-sized apples, pared and cored. Drain them from the sugar, and pile them on a dish to resemble the form of a hedgehog. Slice eighteen or twenty good boiling apples, keep them over a very slow fire until they are a smooth, dry pulp, then fill in with it, so as to make an even surface, all the spaces between the apples, as well as the hollows from which the cores were taken. Spread it evenly all over with the back of a spoon. Make an icing with the whites of three eggs, and three heaped tea-spoonfuls of white sugar. Of this lay on a thick coating, which must again be covered with sifted sugar. Cut half a pound of blanched almonds in the usual spiked form, and fix them thickly over the hedgehog. Bake to give the almonds a little colour, and warm the apples through in a moderately hot oven. Time, twenty to thirty minutes to stew apples. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A Victorian showpiece built from two apple preparations: whole poached apples for structure, thick apple pulp as mortar, then meringue and almond quills. The assembly matters more than any cooking step.
- The hinge: a dry pulpThe sliced apples must cook down to a stiff, almost paste-like purée with no free liquid. A wet pulp will slump, weep through the meringue and collapse the hedgehog while it is in the oven. Cook it uncovered over low heat, stirring, until a spoon drawn through leaves a clean channel.
- Choosing the applesThe whole apples need to hold their shape in syrup, so use a firm variety such as Braeburn or Honeycrisp. The "good boiling apples" for the pulp should be the opposite: Bramley, McIntosh or any cooker that breaks down readily.
- MeasuresHalf a pint in an English book of this date is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ cups. Eight ounces of sugar is a weight, roughly 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated. Half a pound of blanched almonds is roughly 1½ to 1¾ cups whole nuts.
- "The usual spiked form"Split each blanched almond along its natural seam and cut the halves lengthwise into narrow points — commercial slivered almonds are close enough, though shorter and less dramatic. Press them in at an angle, all pointing the same way, or the effect is lost.
- The icing is short on sugarThree heaped teaspoons of sugar to three egg whites gives a foam, not a meringue, and it will not hold a thick coating. Modern practice is about 2 tablespoons of sugar per white, so allow 5 to 6 tablespoons, beaten in gradually to stiff peaks. The "sifted sugar" dusted over the top is what forms the crust.
- OvenA "moderately hot" oven of the period is usually reckoned at somewhere around 375-400F. Ten to fifteen minutes should be enough to colour the almonds and set the meringue surface; longer and the nuts risk scorching before the interior warms, so bring the assembled dish to room temperature first rather than baking it from cold.
- EggsA brief bake at this temperature will not take the meringue to a pasteurising temperature throughout. If serving anyone who should avoid lightly cooked egg, use pasteurised whites.
- Yield and servingFive or six as written, and the shaped mound implies it was brought whole to the table and cut down. The title "iced" refers to the icing, not to freezing.
Apple hedgehog belongs to a family of English dessert conceits -- hedgehogs and porcupines -- current from the eighteenth century through the Victorian era, and which turn on the same joke: a mound of something soft bristling with almond spikes. The same trick was played with a whole almond-studded tipsy cake and with moulded creams. The entry's "probable cost, 2s." would have been dominated by the half pound of almonds, while the paring, coring and spiking passes without comment.