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Nectarine Pudding
Stew a dozen nectarines, not over-ripe, with a little sugar until they are quite tender. Beat them well with a fork, remove the skin and the kernels, let them get cold, then mix with them the well-beaten yolks of four and the whites of two eggs, a quarter of a pint of finely-grated bread-crumbs which have been soaked in as much cream as they will absorb, and add a little more sugar if required. Line a dish with good puff-paste, pour in the mixture, and bake in a moderate oven; strew sifted sugar over the top before serving. Time, one hour to bake. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for six persons.
A Victorian baked fruit custard set with breadcrumbs rather than flour, closer to a fruit-flavoured bread pudding baked in a pastry case than to anything called pudding today. Two things decide whether it succeeds: how dry you reduce the nectarine pulp, and whether the pastry base is crisp before the wet filling goes in.
- Reduce the fruit properlyStewed nectarines throw a great deal of juice, and a slack pulp gives a weeping, soggy filling. Cook them down until the mass mounds on a spoon rather than running, then cool completely before the eggs go near it.
- A quarter of a pintAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, so roughly two-thirds of a US cup of fine crumbs. Measure the crumbs dry, then soak them in cream to saturation — expect them to take somewhere near their own volume.
- Moderate oven350F/175C. At that heat an egg custard of this richness sets gently; much hotter and it curdles and puffs, then sinks.
- The hour is a maximumStart testing at 40 minutes. The filling is done when the centre is just set with a faint wobble; carried to a full hour it may turn granular, particularly with four yolks in it.
- Blind-bake the casePuff paste under a wet filling needs a head start. Line the dish, chill it, bake at 400F/200C until the base is dry and coloured, then drop the oven to 350F and fill.
- Skins and kernelsStewing loosens the skins so they lift out easily after mashing, which is why the order looks odd. The kernels are discarded here and should be — stone-fruit kernels are not an ingredient in this dish despite the almond flavour older cooks sometimes chased with them.
- Quantity of fruitA dozen fruit is a vague measure, so buy by weight rather than count. The recipe specifies fruit 'not over-ripe', which holds its acidity and does not collapse to water.
- Sifted sugarThis means caster or icing sugar dusted over the surface at the table, not a baked glaze. Add it just before serving or it dissolves into the custard.
- YieldSix, as stated. It is rich enough that smaller portions with cream suit modern appetites better.
Nectarines and peaches were prestige fruit in nineteenth-century Britain, grown against warm walls or under glass on large establishments, which is one reason a domestic pudding could carry an estimate as steep as 2s 6d. The construction — stewed fruit pulp bound with egg yolks and cream-soaked breadcrumbs in a pastry case — belongs to a long line of English baked puddings that runs back through eighteenth-century apricot and quince recipes, where crumbs or grated biscuit did the thickening work that flour and cornstarch later took over. The lopsided egg count, four yolks to two whites, is not unusual for the period; yolks were valued for richness and colour, and spare whites had other uses in meringues, icings and clarifying stock.