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Vermicelli Pudding, with Apples
Put a quart of milk into a saucepan with a thin strip of lemon-rind, bring it gently to the boil, remove the lemon-rind, and drop lightly and gradually into it four ounces of very fresh vermicelli. Simmer over a gentle fire, stirring it all the time till it is quite tender and very thick. Turn it into a bowl, work into it a large slice of fresh butter, and sweeten to taste. Let the pudding become almost cold, stir into it two, three, four, or five well-beaten eggs, according to the kind of pudding required, and add a spoonful of brandy if liked. Butter a dish, turn the pudding into it, and cover the surface with good baking apples which have been pared, cored, and thinly sliced. Press them into the pudding, so that they may be covered with the batter, and bake the pudding in a moderately-heated oven till the fruit is tender. Time to bake the pudding, three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 10d. or more, according to quality. Sufficient for six persons.
A milk pudding thickened with pasta rather than rice or semolina, with apple slices pressed into the top. The instructions are sound; only the units and the vague quantities need translating.
- The quartCassell's is working in imperial measure, so a quart is 40 fl oz (1.14 litres) — a little under five US cups of whole milk. Skim milk will not set as richly; use whole.
- VermicelliNineteenth-century vermicelli was sold in long coiled nests of very fine wheat pasta, finer than modern spaghetti. Angel hair or fideo, broken small, is the closest match. 4 oz is about 115 g.
- "A large slice of fresh butter"An unhelpfully casual measure. Read it as 1 to 2 oz (30–55 g) of unsalted butter; more than that and the pudding turns greasy as it bakes.
- The eggs decide the textureThis is the hinge of the recipe. Two eggs give a loose, spoonable milk pudding; five give something close to a firm baked custard that can be turned out. Three or four suits most tastes.
- Cool before the eggs go in"Almost cold" is not fussiness — stirring beaten egg into hot vermicelli scrambles it and you lose the smooth set. Let it drop to lukewarm at most.
- Oven temperatureA moderately-heated oven is conventionally read as somewhere around 350F (175C); the book gives no figure. Three-quarters of an hour at that heat should cook the apples through and just set the custard; check that a knife comes out clean rather than watery.
- The apples"Good baking apples" means a firm, tart cooker that holds its shape — Bramley, Granny Smith, or a similar variety. Slice thinly and press them down so the pudding closes over them, or the exposed edges dry and blacken.
- Sweetening and yieldNo sugar quantity is given; 3 to 4 tablespoons suits a quart of milk with tart apples. The original claims six servings, which is fair for a dish of this size.
Milk puddings thickened with a starch — rice, sago, tapioca, semolina, vermicelli — were the backbone of English nursery and household cookery through the whole Victorian period, cheap, filling and easy on invalids. Vermicelli itself had been imported into Britain from Italy since the eighteenth century and was familiar enough to be sold in ordinary grocers' shops, generally in dried coils; the name means "little worms" in Italian, a description of the shape rather than a flattering one. The strip of lemon rind steeped in the hot milk is the standard period trick for flavouring a plain pudding before vanilla extract became a cupboard staple, and the optional spoonful of brandy marks this as a version fit for the dining room rather than the sickroom. The costing — tenpence, sufficient for six — belongs to the encyclopaedic habit of Cassell's, which priced almost every dish so a housekeeper could plan a week's meals against her allowance.