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Apples and Almonds, Pudding Of
Stew to a pulp six or eight good baking apples, sweeten and flavour them; then lay them at the bottom of a well-buttered dish. Blanch and pound a quarter of a pound of sweet almonds; add to them four table-spoonfuls of sifted sugar, two table-spoonfuls of flour, the grated rind and juice of a lemon, and four well-beaten eggs. Spread the mixture over the apples, and bake in a good oven. Time to bake, about forty minutes. Sufficient for five or six persons. Probable cost, 1s. 2d.
A Victorian baked apple pudding with an almond-and-egg topping that sets somewhere between a sponge and a macaroon. The instructions are terse but complete; most of the work is in getting the two layers to the right consistency before they meet.
- A good ovenThe book gives no temperature. A moderate oven, somewhere around 350-375F (175-190C), suits the forty minutes stated: the topping should be set, puffed and lightly browned, and a skewer in the centre should come out clean of raw batter.
- Sweet almondsOrdinary blanched almonds. The distinction from bitter almonds mattered while both were sold; bitter almonds contain amygdalin and are not used in home cooking now. A quarter pound is 4 oz (about 115 g).
- Blanch and poundPour boiling water over the almonds, stand two minutes, then slip off the skins. Grinding is easier in a food processor, but pulse in short bursts and add a spoonful of the sugar to stop the nuts turning to paste. Store-bought ground almonds (4 oz, about 1 cup) work, though the texture is finer than intended.
- Sifted sugarCaster or superfine sugar, sifted to break up lumps, not icing sugar. Four tablespoons is roughly 2 oz.
- The applesSix to eight baking apples means Bramley or another cooker that collapses; eating apples hold their shape and give a chunky, wetter base. Stew them with barely any water, sweeten to taste, and flavour with cinnamon, cloves or a little lemon. Cook the pulp down until it mounds on a spoon or the topping will sink into it.
- Let the pulp coolSpread the almond mixture over warm apple and the eggs begin to set on contact, which gives a curdled seam. Cool the apple layer to room temperature first.
- Dish and depthA buttered 8- or 9-inch pie or gratin dish, 1.5 to 2 inches deep. In a deeper, narrower dish the topping needs longer and browns before the centre sets.
- Yield and servingFive or six as written. Serve warm rather than hot, with cream or custard. The probable cost of 1s. 2d. is the book's own pricing for a late-Victorian household and is of no use as a guide today.
This belongs to a long family of English baked apple puddings in which stewed fruit is covered with a batter, custard or nut paste rather than pastry, an arrangement much older than the nineteenth century and closely related to the almond-thickened tarts of medieval and early modern cookery. Ground almonds served English cooks for centuries as both thickener and enricher, doing the work that cornflour and butter later took over, and they remained a mark of a slightly genteel pudding well into the Victorian period because they were bought by the pound at the grocer and had to be blanched and pounded by hand. The lemon rind and juice cut the richness of four eggs and 4 oz of nuts. Cassell's habit of printing a probable cost beside each dish, here 1s. 2d., reflects a readership managing a fixed weekly housekeeping allowance, for whom the price of a pudding was as much a part of the recipe as its timing.