Home › Cold Desserts › Wigwam Pudding
Wigwam Pudding
One-fourth pound of ladyfingers, one pint of milk, a teaspoon of vanilla, one gill of sherry, one tumbler of jelly or jam, four eggs, eight tablespoons of powdered sugar. Split the ladyfingers and spread the flat side with the jelly; dip the crust side in the sherry. Line the bottom and sides of the dish in which you wish to serve it with those ladyfingers, log cabin style, in the center of the dish that is, cross them so that the custard will pass between. Now put the milk to heat in double boiler. Beat the yolks of eggs, and stir together with one-half the sugar until light, add to milk and stir until it thickens; add the vanilla and stand aside to cool. Beat the whites of the eggs, adding the sugar gradually till thick and frothy; add lemon.
Pour the custard over the ladyfingers, heap the meringue over the top and stand on a board in the oven to brown.
Brown quickly before the dish heats or the custard will curdle. Mrs A. J.
Aikens.
A trifle in the charlotte manner, assembled in the serving dish and given a quick meringue crown. Two things in the original need translating: the vessel has to survive an oven, and the word "lemon" appears in the method without appearing in the ingredients.
- The hinge: brown fast, not longThe custard beneath is cooked and cooled, and will curdle if the dish itself gets hot, exactly as the recipe warns. Use a very hot oven or a broiler and pull it as soon as the meringue peaks take color, a matter of minutes. Have the assembled pudding cold going in.
- An oven-safe serving dishYou are lining and serving in the same vessel, then putting it under fierce heat. Use tempered glass or glazed stoneware, and set it on a board or thick baking sheet as directed so the base is insulated.
- A gill of sherryHalf a cup. A medium or cream sherry suits this better than a dry fino; the ladyfingers only get a quick dip on the crust side, so the flavor has to carry.
- A tumbler of jelly or jamTumblers of the period varied in size, but roughly 8 fluid ounces is a fair reading, so about a cup — near enough to one standard jar. Currant, raspberry and damson were all common preserves of the period.
- LadyfingersA quarter pound is roughly a dozen of the crisp Italian savoiardi, depending on their size, or a few more of the smaller sponge kind. Crisp ones hold their shape better against the custard.
- The missing lemon"Add lemon" is not accounted for in the ingredient list. Read it as a teaspoon of lemon juice or the grated zest of half a lemon beaten into the whites; the juice also helps stabilize the meringue.
- Sugar divisionEight tablespoons is half a cup, split evenly: a quarter cup beaten with the yolks, a quarter cup added gradually to the whites.
- Cooking the custardIn the double boiler, stir until it coats a spoon, around 175F. Strain it if any threads of egg appear, and cool it fully before it goes over the ladyfingers or it will soak them to mush.
- The meringue is barely cookedA two-minute browning does not bring the whites to a pasteurizing temperature. If that matters for who is eating it, use pasteurized egg whites.
- YieldSix servings in a 1 1/2-quart dish. Serve the day it is made; the meringue weeps by the second day.
The name is generally traced to the construction rather than any Native American source: the split ladyfingers line the bottom and sides and are crossed in the center, "log cabin style." Underneath the conceit it belongs to the large family of English trifles and charlottes — sponge, wine, jam, boiled custard — that settled into American cookbooks and stayed put, and which became easier to make once commercial bakeries sold ladyfingers by the pound instead of requiring the cook to pipe her own. The measurements are given in the vessels of a particular kitchen — a gill, a tumbler — rather than in a standardized cup.