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Angels on Horseback
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 persons. -3 thin slices of stale bread, 1 dozen oysters, a few very thin slices of bacon, some finely chopped | sugar. Place another layer of bread and APPLE CHEESECAKES. butter, and then one of apples, proceeding in this manner until the dish is full; then cover it up with the peel of the apples, to preserve the top from browning or burning; bake in a brisk oven for rather more than 3/4 hour; turn the charlotte on a dish, sprinkle sifted sugar over, and serve.
TIME.- hour, or a few minutes longer.
SEASONABLE from August to March.
Two Victorian savoury-and-sweet standards sit side by side here, and between them there is enough to work from: a bacon-wrapped oyster savoury and a bread-and-butter apple charlotte baked in a brisk oven.
- Brisk ovenA brisk oven is roughly 400-450F (200-230C). The charlotte wants that heat so the outer bread crisps and colours before the apple collapses to sauce.
- The apple-peel lidLaying the peelings over the top is the hinge of the charlotte. They shield the top layer of buttered bread from direct heat and are lifted off before turning out, so do not butter or sugar them.
- Turning it outButter the mould heavily and let the charlotte stand five to ten minutes out of the oven before inverting. Turned out straight from the heat it slumps; left to go cold it sticks.
- Cooking applesUse a variety that breaks down - Bramley, or a mix of Bramley and a firm eater. Modern dessert apples hold their shape and give a watery, loose interior rather than a thick purée.
- TimingRather more than three-quarters of an hour suits a deep dish in a hot oven; a shallower one will be done in 35-40 minutes. Look for deep brown, firm sides.
- Angels on horsebackThe savoury is one shucked oyster per rasher of thin streaky bacon, rolled, skewered and grilled only until the bacon crisps - about four to five minutes. Any longer and the oyster tightens to rubber. Serve on small squares of fried or toasted bread, three per person.
- BaconVictorian streaky bacon was dry-cured and thinly cut. Modern wet-cured rashers release water in the grill and steam rather than crisp; stretch each rasher with the back of a knife first and choose dry-cure if you can.
- YieldThe quantities as given are stated to serve four, and the oyster savoury is a dozen oysters for the same four.
Angels on horseback belong to the Victorian and Edwardian savoury - the small, sharp, usually salty course served after the sweet at a formal dinner and before the dessert fruit, a specifically British habit that puzzled French diners. Oysters were still cheap enough in Mrs Beeton's day to be treated as a filling for something rather than a luxury in themselves, and pairing them with bacon exploited the same salt-and-brine logic that later produced devils on horseback with prunes. The apple charlotte alongside it is the older dish, generally traced to the late eighteenth century and named, it is usually said, for Queen Charlotte, consort of George III; whatever the truth of the name, it is fundamentally a thrift dish, a way of turning stale bread and windfall apples into a substantial pudding, which is why the season is given as August to March - the span of the stored English apple crop.