Amber Pudding
INGREDIENTS to fill a large pie-dish.- apples, 1 lemon, 3 eggs, 3 oz, of moist sugar, a litle castor sugar, 2 oz. of butter, a few crystallised cherries, ANCHOVY SAUCE. short or puff paste. AVERAGE Cost, 18. 6d.
Peel and core the apples, and stew them with the rind and juice of the lemon and the moist sugar till reduced to a pulp.
Grease the bottom of a pie-dish and line it half way down with a strip of paste. Pass the apple marmalade through a sieve, add to it the yolks of the eggs, and after mixing thoroughly turn into the dish and bake for 15 minutes. Beat the whites of the eggs stiff, adding as much castor sugar as they will take up, put the mixture upon the top of the baked pudding, decorate with the cherries, and place it in a moderate oven to bring to a bright golden colour.
TIME. hour to bake the pudding.
SEASONABLE at any time.
An apple-and-meringue pudding whose printed ingredient list has been mangled in transcription — read past the errors and the method is straightforward.
- Ignore the anchovy sauce"ANCHOVY SAUCE" is plainly an intrusion from another entry and has no place in a sweet pudding, though where it strayed from cannot be established from the text. Likewise the 2 oz of butter is never called for in the method; use it to enrich the apple pulp while it is still hot if you like.
- How many applesThe original gives no quantity. For a large pie-dish (roughly 1.5 litres) reckon on 2 lb of cooking apples such as Bramley, which will collapse to about a pint of thick pulp once stewed and sieved.
- Moist sugar and castor sugarMoist sugar is soft light brown sugar; 3 oz is a scant half cup. Castor sugar is superfine white sugar — ordinary granulated will work in the meringue but takes longer to dissolve.
- A moderate oven350F/180C. The first bake sets the yolk-enriched apple; the second is only to colour the meringue and should take 10-15 minutes at that heat, or 5-8 minutes at 400F if you want a darker top with a softer interior.
- The timings contradict each otherThe method says bake 15 minutes, while the TIME line reads only "hour", the figure having dropped out in transcription. Fifteen minutes is right for the base — it is a thin layer of sieved fruit and yolk, not a custard in depth.
- Sieve while hotPassing the marmalade through a sieve removes skin and fibre and leaves a smooth amber pulp. It is far easier hot than cold.
- Adding the yolksLet the pulp cool to lukewarm before beating in the yolks, or they will scramble in streaks.
- Meringue proportionsThe ingredient list asks only for "a little" castor sugar; "as much as they will take up" is usually reckoned at 1 to 2 oz per white, so 3 to 6 oz for three. Spread it right to the edges of the dish so it seals against the rim and does not shrink back.
- YieldSix to eight servings. Best eaten the day it is made; the meringue weeps if refrigerated overnight.
Amber pudding is named for its colour — the sieved, sugar-stewed apple takes on a clear golden-brown. The construction, a fruit base under a sweetened meringue, is the same idea as queen of puddings and lemon meringue pie. The pastry strip lining only the upper half of the dish is a thrifty touch typical of household economy: it gives the appearance of a pie at the rim, where it will be seen, without the cost or weight of a full crust. Crystallised cherries finish the dish as decoration.