Apple Cake
INGREDIENTS for large cake.-8 apples, sugar to taste, the juice of a lemon and half its rind, 2 eggs, half a small cupful of milk, 3 oz. of butter, 2 oz. of sweet almonds, enough good short crust to line a large plate or tin. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 8d.
Prepare the apples as for a tart. Put sugar enough to sweeten them into a basin, DISH OF APPLES. add the lemon peel grated and the milk.
Mix these, then add the eggs whisked and the butter melted, lastly the apples and lemon juice. Line the tin or plate with the paste and put a rim round the edge; put in the mixture and scatter over the almonds, blanched and chopped. Bake for about 1/2 hour.
TIME.- an hour.
A Victorian apple custard tart baked in a pastry-lined plate. The original gives no oven temperature and two different times, so a few decisions have to be made before you start.
- The hinge: this is a custard, not a pie fillingTwo eggs, melted butter and a little milk bind the apples into a soft set. Bake until the centre is just firm to a light touch and no longer wet; carry it much past that and the eggs curdle and weep.
- "Prepare the apples as for a tart"In Beeton that means pared, cored and cut up — not stewed to a purée. Eight apples is roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb; a firmer cooking variety that holds its slices will sit better in the custard than one that breaks down to a fluff.
- Oven heatNone is given, as was normal for the period. Bake at 375F, on a preheated baking sheet so the pastry base sets before the wet mixture soaks it.
- The two timesThe method says "about 1/2 hour"; the TIME line says an hour, and the two are simply not reconciled in the text. Work from the shorter figure and expect 35 to 45 minutes in practice with raw cut apples.
- "A large plate or tin"A 9- to 10-inch pie plate or shallow tart tin. The "rim round the edge" is a raised band of pastry pressed onto the border to hold the liquid in — worth building up properly.
- Half a small cupful of milkGenuinely imprecise; cup measures were not standardised, so the size is a guess. About 3 fl oz is a reasonable reading; more than about 4 fl oz will leave the custard loose.
- Sugar to tasteFor 2 lb of sharp apples, 4 to 6 oz. Mix it into the eggs and milk rather than over the fruit, since the sweetening is carrying the whole custard.
- Sweet almondsThe qualifier distinguishes them from bitter almonds, once sold for flavouring. Use ordinary blanched almonds, chopped; scattered on top they will colour, so watch them in the last ten minutes.
- YieldSix to eight portions. Best warm rather than hot, with cream.
Beeton's kitchen files a great many apple dishes, and this one sits between a tart and a baked custard — a shape common in nineteenth-century English cookery, where a pastry-lined plate with a raised border took whatever the household had in the way of fruit, eggs and milk. Lemon rind and blanched almonds were the standard gestures toward refinement in such puddings. The costing, 1s. 8d., is characteristic of the Book of Household Management and its later abridgements: Isabella Beeton's readers were often young middle-class wives running a house on a fixed allowance, and a price per dish was as much a part of the recipe as the ingredient list. That the baking time and the total time disagree is also typical of the book, which was assembled at speed from a great many sources and correspondents.