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Orange Meringue Pudding
3 oranges 4 eggs 1/2 pint (I cup) milk 2 heaping tablespoonfuls (2 ozs.) butter 1/2 pint (I cup) bread crumbs 3 heaping tablespoonfuls (3 ozs.) sugar Bring the milk and the butter to boiling point, then pour them over the bread crumbs; mix in the sugar and the yolks of the eggs; set aside till cold, then mix in the grated rind and the pulp of the oranges, mix all thoroughly together, and pour into a buttered earthenware pudding dish; bake in a moderate oven until set. Beat up the whites of the eggs till stiff, then gradually beat into them three tablespoonfuls of sugar. Decorate the top of the pudding with this meringue, and return to the oven to brown. 6 juicy pears
A bread-and-butter custard given an orange lift, essentially a British queen of puddings with citrus in place of jam. The one thing to get right is the baking: this is a custard, and it wants gentle heat until just set, not browning heat.
- The stray lineThe "6 juicy pears" at the end belongs to the next recipe in the book, a common artifact of dense old typesetting. Ignore it.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven is 350F. Bake until the centre is just set with a slight wobble, roughly 35-45 minutes in a shallow dish. Overbaking curdles the custard and weeps liquid under the meringue.
- The dishThe recipe specifies a buttered earthenware pudding dish. A 1 1/2-quart buttered ceramic dish is right; glass or metal will brown the edges faster.
- Weights, not spoonfulsThe author helpfully gives ounces: 2 oz butter is 4 tablespoons, 3 oz sugar is a scant 1/2 cup. Weigh them rather than trusting "heaping."
- Half a pintThe book equates half a pint with one cup, so it is working in 16-ounce pints. Use 1 cup milk and 1 cup crumbs.
- Bread crumbsSoft fresh crumbs from day-old white bread, not dry packaged crumbs, which absorb far more liquid and give a pasty result.
- The orange pulpGrate the zest before cutting. For the pulp, segment the oranges over a bowl and discard membrane, pith and seeds; whole chopped orange with membrane turns bitter and stringy. Fold the fruit in only after the crumb mixture has cooled, or the acid and warm custard will curdle.
- MeringueThree tablespoons of sugar to four whites is a soft meringue, so beat the sugar in a spoonful at a time and spread it to the very edges of the dish to seal it. Return to the oven at 350F for 12-15 minutes to colour, or 425F for 4-5 minutes if you want a darker top with a softer interior.
- YieldServes four to six. Best warm rather than hot, an hour or so out of the oven.
Puddings built on breadcrumbs, milk, butter and eggs, with the whites saved for a meringue lid, were a fixture of Victorian and Edwardian British cookery, the best-known being queen of puddings, which uses jam between custard and meringue. Substituting the zest and pulp of oranges for the preserve fits a period when imported Spanish and Mediterranean oranges were a familiar winter sight in British and American markets. The dish also has the practical convenience of a single earthenware dish going into the oven, being topped and browned, and coming to the table as its own serving vessel, saving both washing-up and the reheating that a turned-out pudding would need.