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Apple Pudding
1 pound apples stewed very dry. 1 pound sugar. 1/2 pound butter. Yolks of 7 eggs. Rind and juice two lemons. Bake in a paste.--Mrs. Dr. E. Delicious Apple Pudding.
Three eggs, one cupful sugar, one cupful melted butter, one cupful sweet milk, one and one-third cupful of apples, one teaspoonful essence of lemon; baked in pastry. This quantity will make two plates.--Mrs. M. M. D. Apple Pudding.
Boil and strain twelve apples as for sauce. Stir in one-quarter pound butter, and the same of sugar. When cold, add four eggs, well beaten. Pour into a baking-dish thickly strewn with crumbs, and strew crumbs on the top. When done, grate white sugar on top.--Mrs. M.
Apple Pudding. 1 quart chopped apples. 1 pint flour. 1 pint new milk. 3 eggs. Bake quickly after mixing, and eat with sauce.--Miss E.T. Dried Apple Pudding.
Wash ten ounces of apples well in warm water. Boil them in a quart of water. When soft, add ten ounces of sugar, eight ounces of butter, the juice and grated rind of two lemons. When cold and ready to bake, add five beaten eggs. Bake with or without pastry. Ten ounces of apples will make a common sized pudding.--Mrs. R.
Five versions of the same idea, collected from five contributors: stewed apple enriched with butter, sugar and eggs, either poured into a pastry shell or baked as a batter. The first, third and fifth are closer to lemon curd tarts than to what a modern cook calls pudding.
- "Bake in a paste"Paste means pastry: the mixture is baked in a pastry case. The recipe does not say whether a top crust is used. Blind-baking the shell briefly first is a modern precaution against a soft base under the wet apple mixture.
- Oven temperaturesNone of the five recipes gives a temperature. The egg-and-butter fillings are essentially custards and are best in a moderate oven until just set with a slight wobble at the centre. Miss E. T.'s batter pudding is the exception: "bake quickly" indicates a hot oven, so the batter sets before the apple sinks.
- Sweet milk and new milkBoth mean plain fresh whole milk, specified because the alternative in a nineteenth-century kitchen was soured or buttermilk. Use whole milk; skim will make a thin, weeping custard.
- Stewed very dryThis is the hinge of the first recipe. A pound of apples cooked down until almost no free liquid remains, then beaten or sieved smooth; anything looser and the filling will not set against that much butter. Expect substantial loss of weight as water evaporates.
- The butter is not a misprintHalf a pound of butter to a pound of apples, and a full cup melted in Mrs. M. M. D.'s version, produce something closer to lemon cheese than to a fruit pudding. It works, but cut the slices small.
- Essence of lemonAn oil-based flavouring, which may well be more concentrated than modern lemon extract. Using rather less extract than the teaspoonful called for, or the grated zest of one lemon, is the safer course.
- Egg yolksSeven yolks with no whites gives a dense, deep-yellow filling. The whites keep for meringue or a sponge; the recipe as written has no use for them.
- Dried applesMrs. R.'s ten ounces are dried rings, which is why they are washed in warm water and boiled in a full quart. They will absorb most of it; drain and reduce any excess before adding the butter and sugar, or the pudding will not firm.
- Adding eggs when coldTwo of these recipes insist on it. Beaten eggs stirred into hot apple pur"e will scramble in streaks. Cool the mixture to lukewarm at most.
- Yield"Two plates" means two pie plates. A "common sized pudding" is a single dish; the book does not say how many it serves.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, worked by soliciting recipes from Virginia housewives, who are identified only by initials, and printing them side by side without reconciling them — which is why the same title appears five times here with five different sets of proportions. The dishes themselves descend from the English baked apple pudding of the eighteenth century, a mixture of apple pulp, butter, sugar, eggs and lemon set in a pastry case, bearing a loose family resemblance to the lemon and Bakewell puddings of the same tradition; Hannah Glasse and her successors print recipes very like Mrs. Dr. E.'s. The inclusion of a dried-apple version is the American note.