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Angel Pudding
1 lb. English walnuts shelled 1 1/4 cups powdered sugar 3 teaspoons baking powder 9 oz. dates (mixed with sugar) Whites of five eggs Break the walnuts fine and cut dates in fine pieces, add sugar and whites of eggs last. Bake in a moderate oven twenty to thirty minutes. Serve with whipped cream.
A flourless baked meringue-and-nut pudding of the kind that turns dense and chewy at the edges and soft in the middle. The instructions are compressed to the point of leaving out a pan size and the state of the egg whites, both of which decide whether it works.
- Beat the whites firstThe recipe says only "whites of five eggs" and adds them last; it does not say whether to beat them. With no flour and no butter in the mixture, the whites are almost certainly meant to be whipped and folded in, and stirring them in slack would give a flatter, denser result.
- Moderate oven350F. Twenty to thirty minutes is right for a shallow pan; the top should be set, lightly browned and dry to the touch, with the centre still slightly yielding.
- Pan and depthNo dish is named. Use a buttered 9x13 inch pan, or an 8 or 9 inch square for a thicker pudding, and add ten minutes to the bake if it is much deeper than an inch.
- "Powdered sugar"In cookbooks of this vintage the term often meant sugar ground finer than granulated but not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Either works; modern confectioners' sugar dissolves faster into the whites and gives a slightly softer set.
- A pound of walnutsThat is shelled weight, roughly 4 cups of halves, chopped fine. It is a great deal of nut for the amount of sugar and egg, which is why the finished pudding is closer to a nut torte than a meringue.
- Dates "mixed with sugar"Toss the chopped dates with a spoonful or two of the measured sugar before they go in. Cut dates clump into a solid mass otherwise and will not distribute through the whites. Nine ounces is about 1 1/2 cups chopped, pitted.
- The baking powderThree teaspoons is a heavy dose and there is no flour for it to lift. It contributes a little puff and a faint mineral edge; halving it does no harm.
- Yield and servingA 9x13 pan cuts into ten or twelve squares. Serve just warm or at room temperature with unsweetened whipped cream, since the pudding itself is very sweet.
"Angel" in American cookery from roughly the 1880s onward tended to signal a batter built on egg whites alone, no yolks and no butter, following the naming of angel food cake. Flourless date-and-nut puddings like this one appear in community, church and promotional cookbooks in the first decades of the twentieth century. The use of chopped dates rather than raisins fits a period in which dates were becoming cheaper and more widely available in grocery stores, as the California industry developed alongside imported fruit.