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Stewed Apricots with Custard
12 apricots 4 tablespoonfuls sugar 4 eggs 1 pint (2 cups) cream 1 gill (¼ pint) rum A few slices sponge cake 1/2 pint (I cup) hot water Peel the apricots and cut them into halves, re- Crush the vermicelli in the hand till it is in quite short pieces. Put it into the boiling milk, then add the butter, and stir over the fire till it becomes thick; this will take a quarter of an hour. Remove from the fire, add the sugar, almonds, grated rind of lemon, nutmeg, and the yolks of the eggs, stir all to mix thoroughly, then add the stiffly beaten whites and stir them in gently. Pour into a well-buttered earthenware dish, cover with the lid or a buttered paper, and steam for one hour. Serve with sweet sauce.
The pudding can be baked in a moderate oven till it is nicely browned. Serve with cream. 16 walnuts
Two things are going on here: a compote of apricots with a rum custard and sponge cake, and a steamed milk pudding thickened with vermicelli. The measurements are Edwardian and the oven direction is vague, so both need translating before you cook.
- A gillA gill is a quarter of a pint, which in the American measure used here is half a cup. The parenthetical "14 pint" and "I pint" are simply 1/4 pint and 1 pint respectively.
- Cream, then and now"Cream" in books of this period was not a standardised product and could be anything from lightly separated to very rich; for this dish assume something closer to modern heavy or whipping cream. Single or light cream will set more softly.
- Moderate ovenRead that as roughly 350-375F. For a custard-based pudding, set the dish in a pan of hot water so the outside does not curdle before the centre sets.
- Steaming an earthenware dishButter it well, cover with the lid or a round of buttered paper tied down, and stand it on a trivet or folded cloth in a pan with water halfway up the sides. Keep the water at a bare simmer for the full hour and top it up with boiling water as needed.
- Vermicelli in a milk puddingThis is wheat vermicelli, the fine dried pasta, not rice vermicelli. Crushing it short presumably helps: long strands mat together and the pudding is harder to slice.
- The quarter hour of stirringFifteen minutes over the heat is not padding. The starch has to swell fully or the finished pudding will be thin and weep in the dish. Use a heavy pan and low heat, and stir the base constantly.
- Adding the yolksTake the pan off the heat and let the mixture stop steaming before the yolks go in, or they will scramble. Fold the beaten whites in with a light hand at the last moment; they are the only lift the pudding gets.
- Peeling apricotsRipe apricots peel easily after 20-30 seconds in boiling water and a plunge into cold. Under-ripe fruit will not release its skin and is better simply halved and stewed with the skin on.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Twelve apricots with a pint of cream and four eggs would plausibly serve six to eight; no quantities survive for the vermicelli pudding, so no estimate can be given for it.
Steamed and baked milk puddings were a common everyday sweet course in British and American households, and a covered earthenware dish standing in a pan of simmering water suited them well: heavy lidded earthenware that could go from stovetop or steamer to table saved the cook a second dish to wash. Vermicelli was one of a family of cheap starches -- sago, tapioca, semolina, ground rice -- used the same way, thickening milk into something that would feed a table for pennies. The apricot dish belongs to a grander line of cookery: fruit stewed in syrup, laid over sponge cake, doused with spirit and masked with custard, in the manner of the trifles and charlottes of nineteenth-century dinner tables.