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Neapolitan Custard Pudding
Cut two spongecakes into slices, and spread a little jam over each slice. Place them in a buttered pie-dish, sprinkle over them six or seven powdered ratafias, and pour over the whole a custard made as follows. Sweeten half a pint of milk with three lumps of sugar which have been well rubbed upon the rind of a large fresh lemon. Let the custard nearly boil, then stir into it a table-spoonful of flour which has been mixed smoothly with a little cold water. Add two ounces of fresh butter, and stir the mixture over the fire until it thickens. When almost cold add the well-beaten yolks of three eggs, put the pudding into a moderate oven, and bake until it stiffens. Whip the whites of the eggs to a firm froth, spread this on the top of the pudding, and sift about a table-spoonful of powdered white sugar over the surface. Put the pudding in the oven again eight or ten minutes before it is served, that the eggs may stiffen a little. Time to bake, half an hour. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for four persons.
This is a Victorian trifle turned into a baked pudding: jam-spread sponge under a flour-thickened custard, finished with meringue. The custard is the hinge, and the order of operations matters more than the timings.
- Yolks go in off the heatThe flour-and-butter base is cooked on the stove first, then cooled before the yolks are stirred in. Add them to a hot pan and they scramble; the pudding sets in the oven, not on the burner.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz (about 285 ml), not the US 8. A tablespoon of flour plus 2 oz of butter to that quantity of milk gives a thickened, enriched custard rather than a pouring one.
- Sugar rubbed on lemon rindThree lumps rubbed hard against the lemon until yellow and fragrant is an oleo-saccharum: the technique extracts the peel oils without any zest in the custard. Three Victorian lumps are roughly 2–3 teaspoons of sugar in total, so this is a barely sweet custard relying on the jam for sweetness.
- RatafiasSmall crisp almond macaroons, sold as ratafia biscuits in Britain and close to Italian amaretti. Six or seven crushed will do; if you substitute amaretti use fewer, as modern ones are larger and more strongly flavoured.
- SpongecakesNot two layer cakes. These are individual sponges of the sort sold as trifle sponges, small enough that two, sliced, will line a pie-dish.
- Moderate oven350°F / 175°C. Half an hour at that heat should leave the custard just set with a slight wobble at the centre; carry-over heat and the meringue stage will finish it.
- The meringue returnEight to ten minutes at the same moderate heat gives a pale, soft-set meringue rather than a crisp browned one. If you want colour, the top of the oven or a brief blast at 425°F does it faster than extending the time, which will overcook the custard beneath.
- Dish and yieldA buttered pie-dish; the recipe does not state a size. Four servings, as stated.
The name attaches to a whole family of nineteenth-century English puddings built in layers \ urned on layering, though the term's origins are contested — Neapolitan ice cream is generally traced to Italian, and specifically Neapolitan, ice-cream makers and to spumoni, so the link to Naples is not merely decorative. What is underneath is a baked trifle: sponge, jam, macaroon crumbs and custard, the standard components of the trifle rearranged for the oven and finished with a meringue lid in the manner of a queen of puddings. The flour in the custard is the tell of an economical household book. Egg-only custards were the finer thing, but a spoonful of flour insures the mixture against curdling and stretches three yolks across four people. The recipe gives the probable cost as tenpence, which is the sort of detail that made these dictionaries useful: the reader was expected to cost a dish before deciding to make it.