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Apple Pudding (MRS E S Root)
MRS. E. S. Root.
Fill a buttered baking dish with sliced apples, and pour over the top a batter made of one tablespoon of butter, one-half cup of sugar, one egg, one-half cup of milk, one cup of flour in which has been sifted one teaspoon of baking powder. Bake in a moderate oven till brown. Serve with a liquid sauce. Peaches are very nice served in the same way.
— Mrs. David L. Egnor
A cobbler-style pudding: fruit on the bottom, a thin cake batter over the top. The original assumes a cook who knows what a batter should look like and what a pudding sauce is, so those are the two places to pay attention.
- Moderate oven350F. Expect 40 to 50 minutes in an 8-inch square or similar 1½-quart dish, until the top is well browned and a skewer through the centre of the batter comes out clean.
- Dish size and fruit quantity"Fill a buttered baking dish" is roughly 5 to 6 cups of sliced apples, peeled or not as you prefer. The batter is enough to cover an 8-inch square; a wider dish will leave you with a thin, dry crust.
- No sugar on the fruitAll the sugar is in the batter, which suits sharp cooking apples. With sweet dessert apples the result is flat, so toss the slices with a tablespoon or two of sugar and a squeeze of lemon before filling the dish.
- Baking powderOne teaspoon to a cup of flour is in line with modern practice, and period powders were generally single-acting rather than double-acting. Modern double-acting powder at this quantity is fine; there is no need to increase it.
- "A liquid sauce"This means a thin pouring sauce rather than hard sauce; sauces of this kind were often sugar, butter and boiling water thickened with a little cornstarch and flavoured with vanilla, nutmeg or lemon. Cream or a thin custard does the same job.
- PeachesThe suggested substitution works, but peaches release far more juice than apples. Use firm freestones, and drain them briefly if very ripe or the underside of the batter stays wet.
- YieldSix modest servings. Best warm; the top crust softens as it stands.
Apple pudding of this kind — fruit below, a single-egg cake batter above, baked and eaten with a poured sauce — was the everyday dessert of an American household with a fruit cellar and no time for pastry. It sits at the point where English batter puddings shade into what later cookbooks called cobbler or apple sponge, and it uses baking powder rather than the older beaten-egg or yeast leavening. Community books like this one tend to carry several near-identical apple puddings under different names, and this entry shows the small confusions that come with that method: the recipe is headed for Mrs. E. S. Root but signed by Mrs. David L. Egnor. The note that "peaches are very nice served in the same way" suggests a contributor thinking in terms of whatever fruit was to hand.