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Swiss Pudding, Plain
Take half a dozen large baking apples, pared, cored, and sliced, and half a pound of finely-grated bread-crumbs. Butter a pie-dish, and cover the bottom with a layer of bread-crumbs. Add a layer of sliced apples, and sprinkle over these a little grated nutmeg or lemon-rind, and a large spoonful of moist sugar. Fill the dish with alternate layers of bread-crumbs and apples, and let crumbs form the uppermost as well as the lowest layer. Place little pieces of butter here and there on the top of the pudding, and pour half a cupful of water and the juice of the lemon upon it. Bake in a moderate oven. When the surface of the pudding is brightly browned, and the apples have fallen, it is done enough. Serve with finely-powdered sugar. If liked, six ounces of beef suet may be substituted for the butter, and the ingredients may be mixed thoroughly, put into a buttered mould, and boiled instead of being baked. Time to bake, about two hours, less or more according to the quality of the apples; to boil, four hours. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A layered apple and crumb pudding of the Brown Betty type, written for a coal range and a stale loaf. Very little needs changing beyond the timing.
- Moderate ovenRead it as 350F (180C, gas 4). If the top browns before the apples have collapsed, lay foil over it loosely.
- The two hours is generousSix apples in a pie-dish at 350F are usually soft in 60 to 75 minutes. The original timing assumes a slow-falling range oven and firm English cooking apples. Judge by the two signs given: a brightly browned top and apples that have sunk.
- BreadcrumbsHalf a pound of finely grated crumbs is somewhere around four cups by volume, depending on how dry the loaf is; grate from a day-old white loaf rather than blitzing to dust. Dried commercial crumbs will drink the juice and go pasty; use fresh.
- Moist sugarSoft light brown sugar. It was the ordinary unrefined grocer's sugar of the period, as against loaf sugar, which had to be crushed.
- The lemonThe recipe offers nutmeg or lemon-rind for flavouring, then calls for the juice of the lemon regardless. Keep a lemon on hand whichever you choose; the acid keeps the apples from tasting flat.
- Butter quantityNone is stated for the dotting, which is left to the cook's eye. Two to three ounces (60-85 g) in small pieces across the top will do.
- ApplesChoose a variety that breaks down: Bramley, Granny Smith, or a mix with a soft eater. Firm supermarket apples that hold their shape will never "fall" as the recipe expects.
- The boiled versionSubstituting six ounces of shredded beef suet and boiling the mixture in a buttered mould for four hours makes an entirely different, denser pudding. Keep the water at a bare simmer and top it up so the mould is never uncovered.
- YieldFour to five as written. Serve warm with powdered sugar, or with cream or custard.
Cassell's gives this as "plain", which implies a richer version elsewhere in the book, and the connection to Switzerland is decorative rather than documented; nineteenth-century English cookery books attached national names to puddings with some freedom. What the dish actually is, is a member of the large family of crumb-and-fruit bakes that includes the Brown Betty and the various apple charlottes, all of them ways of using up a stale loaf. The note that beef suet may replace butter, and the pudding be boiled instead of baked, shows the recipe adapting to a kitchen without reliable oven heat: a pot or copper of boiling water was often more dependable than an evenly heated oven. Cassell's gives the probable cost as one shilling for four or five persons.