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Orange and Banana Pudding
Peel four oranges (carefully removing the seeds from them) and six bananas, and cut them into thin slices. Arrange them in alternate layers in a glass dish, sprinkling each layer with castor sugar. Make a custard by boiling a pint of milk, three beaten eggs, and two table-spoonfuls of castor sugar; flavour with vanilla. When cold pour it over the bananas and oranges. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
A layered fruit trifle with a pouring custard, meant to be served cold in a glass dish so the stripes of orange and banana show. The only technical step is the custard, and the instruction as written will scramble it if taken literally.
- Do not boil the custardHeat the milk to just below a simmer, pour it slowly onto the beaten eggs and sugar while whisking, then return the mixture to a low heat and stir constantly until it coats the back of a spoon, around 175-180F. Boiling eggs in milk curdles them; the Victorian phrasing assumes a cook who knows to keep the pan gentle.
- Castor sugarSuperfine or caster sugar, finer than granulated and quicker to dissolve. Granulated works in the custard; for sprinkling between fruit layers, superfine dissolves into the juices rather than sitting gritty.
- QuantitiesA pint here is the imperial pint, 20 fl oz, so use 2 1/2 US cups of milk. Three eggs to that much milk gives a thin pouring custard, not a set one, which is what the dish wants.
- Preparing the orangesModern navel oranges are seedless, so the seed-removal caution is moot, but cut away all the white pith and preferably segment them free of the membrane. Slicing across the whole fruit, as written, leaves chewy membrane in every layer.
- Bananas brownSlice them last and toss with a little of the orange juice. Assembled and chilled under the custard they hold up for a few hours, but this is not a dish to build the day before.
- VanillaInfuse a split pod in the milk as it heats and strain it out, or add a teaspoon of extract once the custard is off the heat. Extract added to hot liquid loses much of its aroma.
- Chilling and yieldCool the custard with a piece of parchment on the surface to stop a skin forming, then pour it over the fruit and refrigerate at least two hours. The quantities would serve roughly six in a deep glass bowl, though the book gives no yield.
- Probable cost1s. 6d. is the estimated cost of the ingredients when the book was compiled; Cassell's gives such a figure throughout. It is not a modern price guide.
Cassell's prints this among the simpler cold sweets of its period. The construction is pure trifle logic without the sponge or the wine: fruit, sugar, and a boiled custard poured over cold, served in a glass dish so the layers are part of the effect. Victorian cookery books are full of dishes designed to be looked at through the side of the bowl.