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Apple Custard, Baked
INGREDIENTS for large dish. -8 large apples, moist sugar to taste, 3 tablespoonfuls of cold water, the grated rind of 1 lemon, pint of milk, 3 eggs, 3 oz. of loaf sugar. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 1d.
Pare and core the apples; put them into a lined saucepan with the cold water, and, as they heat, beat them to a pulp; sweeten with the sugar, and add the lemon rind.
When cold, put the fruit at the bottom of a pie-dish, and pour over it a custard, made with the above proportion of milk, eggs, and sugar; place the dish in a moderate oven, and bake from 20 to 30 minutes.
TIME.-20 to 30 minutes.
SEASONABLE from August to March.
A plain Victorian family pudding: sweetened apple pulp under a baked egg custard. The one thing to watch is the custard, which sets by gentle heat and curdles if pushed.
- The hinge: bake the custard gentlyA custard sets at around 170-180F internally; above that the eggs squeeze out water and the surface weeps. Beeton gives no temperatures, only a "moderate oven"; modern cooks usually read that as somewhere around 325-350F (160-180C), and at that heat a large dish will want the low end of the time or a water bath. Pull it when the centre still has a slight wobble.
- Moist sugar and loaf sugarMoist sugar is unrefined soft brown sugar, used here for the fruit; loaf sugar was hard refined white sugar broken from a cone, used for the custard where colour mattered. Light brown sugar and caster sugar respectively will do.
- A pint of milkAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, or 2.5 US cups. Three eggs to that much milk gives a soft, barely set custard; if you want it firmer, four eggs is closer to modern practice.
- The applesEight large apples means cooking apples that collapse when heated, such as Bramleys; probably in the region of 3-4 lb of fruit. Dessert apples hold their shape and will not beat to a pulp in three tablespoons of water.
- Lined saucepanThis means a tin-lined copper pan, specified because acid fruit reacts with bare copper. Any stainless or enamelled pan answers the same purpose.
- Let the pulp coolThe instruction "when cold" is not decorative. Warm apple will begin to cook the eggs where the custard meets it, giving a curdled seam through the middle.
- Pie-dishA Victorian pie-dish is a deep earthenware dish, often oval; something around a 2-quart baking dish will serve. A wider, shallower dish sets faster and more evenly.
- Yield and servingThe recipe says only that this is the quantity for a large dish; it will serve roughly six. Best eaten just warm or at room temperature; refrigerate leftovers, as it is a fresh egg-and-milk custard.
- Average cost1s 1d is thirteen old pence for a dish feeding a family, which is the point of its inclusion. It is a costing, not an ingredient.
Apple custard belongs to the large family of English fruit puddings that Isabella Beeton set out in Household Management (1861) and that were carried into later abridgements such as All About Cookery: cheap fruit stretched with milk and eggs, baked in the dish it is served from. The note "seasonable from August to March" is the most informative line in the recipe, marking the window between the first windfalls and the end of what a cool loft or fruit room could keep sound; after March a household turned to dried or bottled fruit. The separate specification of moist sugar for the fruit and loaf sugar for the custard reflects a period when sugar came in grades of very different price and colour.