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Orange Pudding (Cutthree nice juicy oranges)
Cutthree nice juicy oranges in slices, put in buttered dish, sprinkle over it one small cup of powdered sugar. Make a soft custard of three cups of milk, yolks of two eggs beaten with one cup of sugar, two teaspoons of cornstarch. Let all boil until thick, make a meringue of whites and dot over pudding. Bake to a golden brown.
— Mrs. Nicholas Lauria
A straightforward orange custard with a meringue lid, of the kind that filled the dessert pages of American community cookbooks around 1900. Two things in the text need translating: the sugar, and the fact that the custard is cooked twice.
- Powdered sugar meant something elseIn this period "powdered sugar" was granulated sugar ground fine — closer to today's caster or superfine sugar than to modern confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch. Either will dissolve into the oranges, but superfine is the truer match.
- Prepare the oranges properlySlices cut straight across leave pith and membrane, which turn bitter and chewy under a hot custard. Cut away peel and white pith to the flesh, slice crosswise, and flick out the seeds. The recipe does not specify a dish; three oranges will give roughly two layers in one of about 8 inches.
- The custard is cooked on the stove first"Let all boil until thick" means the milk, yolks, sugar and cornstarch go into a saucepan together, not into the oven. Slake the cornstarch in a little cold milk before it meets the rest or it will lump. Stir constantly; a cornstarch-bound custard can take a brief boil without curdling, but only just.
- Pour it hot over the fruitPour it over the fruit -- The oranges and sugar sit in the buttered dish; the finished custard goes over them. The recipe leaves the step unstated, but the custard is easiest to spread while still hot.
- Meringue and ovenBeat the two whites to soft peaks with about 2 tablespoons sugar, which the original omits; unsweetened whites weep and bead. Bake at 325–350F for 12–15 minutes, just to colour the peaks. "Golden brown" here is the meringue only — the pudding beneath is already cooked.
- SweetnessA cup of sugar in the custard plus a small cup over the fruit is heavy by current taste. Two-thirds of each is ample.
- Yield and servingServes about six; the recipe specifies no dish, but a shallow 8-inch one suits. Best warm or at room temperature the day it is made; meringue sitting overnight on a wet custard will bead and weep.
Orange pudding belongs to a long line of custards built over fruit and capped with meringue — the same architecture as lemon meringue pie and the English "queen of puddings," with the yolks going into the custard and the whites onto the top so that nothing is wasted. Its appearance in a Catskill village collection may reflect the reach of the winter citrus trade: by the turn of the twentieth century Florida and California citrus was arriving in upstate New York markets in winter, though how far that shaped any one recipe is guesswork. Cornstarch is the other date stamp. Commercial cornstarch became a kitchen staple in America in the second half of the nineteenth century, and it let a home cook thicken a custard on two yolks rather than the greater number an egg-set custard would demand — thrift dressed up as elegance, which is much of what community cookbooks like this one record.