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Spongecakes, with Apple Snow
Cut four or five stale penny spongecakes into thin slices; lay these on a glass dish, and pour over them half a pint of good custard or cream flavoured with a little brandy. Bake half a dozen large apples in a well-heated oven till they break and are soft. Scrape the pulp away from the skin and cores, weigh it, and a quarter of an hour before it is wanted beat up with half a pound of it the strained juice of a lemon, as much powdered sugar as will sweeten it pleasantly-the quantity needed will depend upon the quality of the apples--and the well-whisked whites of two eggs. Beat the apple-mixture with a whisk till it looks light and frothy, and has the appearance of snow, pile it on the custard, and serve immediately. Time, two hours to soak the spongecakes in the custard. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. if the custard be made with milk. Sufficient for a small supper dish.
A trifle in two parts: soaked sponge under a whipped apple foam. The whole thing hinges on timing, since the snow begins to weep within half an hour of being made.
- Make the snow lastThe original says a quarter of an hour before it is wanted, and means it. Whisked apple pulp and egg white hold their volume briefly, then separate into liquid and froth, so assemble at the table's edge and serve at once.
- Penny spongecakesSmall individual sponges sold singly, roughly the size and dryness of a modern ladyfinger or savoiardo biscuit. Stale is not a flaw here but the point, as fresh sponge collapses into paste in the custard.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups. Pour it over the sliced sponge and give it the full two hours of soaking called for.
- A well-heated ovenThe recipe gives no temperature. For baking apples until they burst and collapse, a hot oven of roughly 400F for 45-60 minutes depending on size will do. Score or prick the skins first so they split where you want them to.
- Weighing the pulpHalf a pound of scraped pulp is about a cup. The recipe has you weigh the pulp and then use half a pound of it, which suggests six large apples will give you more than you need. A dry, tart cooking apple is generally said to froth better than a sweet dessert apple, which tends to stay soupy.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term means finely ground white sugar, closest to modern caster or superfine sugar. Confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch and will dull the flavour; start with about 3 tablespoons and taste.
- Raw egg whiteThe whites are never cooked. If serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised, use pasteurised whites, which whip perfectly well for this.
- Custard or cream"Good custard" here is a stirred egg custard, not a set baked one; a pouring custard thick enough to coat a spoon is right. The alternative in the recipe is plain cream, poured over the sponge in the same way and flavoured with the same brandy.
- Yield"A small supper dish" is all the recipe commits to. It does not keep; the soaked sponge turns to sludge and the snow falls.
Apple snow is one of the oldest surviving English froths, appearing in eighteenth-century manuscript and printed cookery books long before Cassell's. It belongs to a family of dishes -- snows, fools, whips, syllabubs -- built on the discovery that egg white or cream will hold air, and that a fruit puree beaten into that air becomes a dessert with almost no cost. What makes this particular version characteristic of Cassell's is the thrift underneath it: stale penny cakes bought cheap from the baker, and a probable cost of one shilling and sixpence carefully stated so a household could judge whether supper was within its means. The instruction to weigh the pulp and to sweeten by taste rather than by rule reflects a period when apple varieties varied wildly from barrel to barrel and no cook could assume the fruit in front of her matched the fruit in the book.