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Apple Meringue
Cover bottom and sides of baking pan with toasted bread, wet with hot milk. Core a dozen apples, and cook them whole. Sweeten them with sugar, season with nutmeg.
Beat 3 egg yolks with a little sugar and pour over the apples, which have been placed in the baking pan. Cover with stiffly beaten egg whites (3) and bake in slow oven 325 degrees about 5 minutes.
A charlotte-style baked apple dish built on a lining of milk-soaked toast, finished with meringue. The recipe gives an oven temperature but a bake time far too short to set either the custard or the meringue.
- The bake time is the problemFive minutes at 325F will neither cook the yolks poured over the apples nor dry the meringue. Bake until the meringue is set and lightly coloured and the custard registers 160F, generally 20 to 30 minutes at that temperature; if the meringue browns first, tent it loosely with foil.
- Toast liningUse a firm white bread, toasted dry rather than dark, cut to fit the bottom and sides of the pan; a deep 9x13 pan or 3-quart dish suits the quantity of fruit. Dip the slices in hot milk and press them in place, using only enough milk to wet them without turning them to paste. The recipe specifies neither pan nor quantities.
- Cooking the apples"Cook them whole" means poaching or baking the cored apples until tender but still holding shape; poached, that may be 20 minutes or so, baked whole rather longer. Peel them after coring unless you want skins in the finished dish; a firm baking variety such as Rome, Braeburn or Golden Delicious holds up best.
- SweeteningAmounts are left to the cook. For a dozen apples, figure 1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar and a scant teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg, adjusted to the fruit.
- The yolk layerThree yolks with a little sugar is a thin binding glaze rather than a custard. Loosening them with a few tablespoons of the hot poaching liquid or milk before pouring helps them spread evenly instead of pooling.
- Meringue proportionsThree whites want about 6 tablespoons of sugar beaten in a spoonful at a time to stiff, glossy peaks. Spread it so it touches the edge of the dish all round, which keeps it from shrinking back as it bakes.
- YieldTwelve apples in a large pan serves eight to ten. Serve warm; the toast base softens and weeps if the dish stands long.
Apples baked over a lining of soaked bread belong to the charlotte family, a thrifty method for turning stale loaf into a structure that could hold stewed fruit; apple charlotte was established by the turn of the nineteenth century. Adding a meringue cap borrows from the same impulse that produced lemon meringue pie and the various "queen of puddings": the yolks go into the body of the dish, the whites are whipped with sugar and browned on top, and nothing is wasted.