Apricot Cream
INGREDIENTS for quart mould.-12 ripe apricots, 1/2 lb. of sugar, 1½ pint of milk, the yolks of 5 eggs, 1 oz. of gelatine. AVERAGE COST, 2s. 2d.
Divide the apricots, take out the stones, and boil them in a syrup made with 1/4 lb. of sugar and 1/4 pint of water, until they APRICOTS. form a thin marmalade, which rub through a sieve.
Boil the milk with the other 1/4 lb. of sugar, let it cool a little, then mix with it the yolks of eggs which have been previously well beaten; put this mixture into a jug, place this jug in boiling water, and stir it one way over the fire until it thickens; but on no account let it boil. Strain through a sieve, add the gelatine, previously boiled with a small quantity of water, and keep stirring it till nearly cold; then mix the cream with the apricots; stir well, put it into an oiled mould, and, if convenient, set it on ice; at any rate, in a very cool place.
It should turn out on the dish without any difficulty. In winter-time, when fresh apricots are not obtainable, tinned fruit may be substituted for them.
TIME. From 20 to 30 minutes to boil the apricots.
SEASONABLE in August, September, and October.
Apricot Jam, or Marmalade. - INGREDIENTS. - To every lb. of ripe apricots, weighed after being skinned and stoned, allow lb. of sugar. AVERAGE COST, 6d. to 8d. per pot.
APRICOT PUDDING.
Pare the apricots, which should be ripe, as thinly as possible, break them in half, and remove the stones. Weigh the fruit, and to every lb. allow the above proportion of loaf sugar. Pound the sugar very finely in a mortar, strew it over the apricots, which should be placed on dishes, and let them remain for 12 hours. Break the stones, blanch the kernels, and put them with the sugar and fruit into a preservingpan. Let these simmer very gently until clear; take out the pieces of apricot singly as they become so, and, as fast as the scum rises, carefully remove it. Put the apricots into small jars, pour over them the syrup and kernels, cover the jam with pieces of paper dipped in the purest salad-oil, and stretch over the top of the jars tissue paper, cut about 2 inches larger and brushed over with the white of an egg: when dry, it will be perfectly hard and air-tight.
TIME.-12 hours, sprinkled with sugar; about hour to boil the jam.
SEASONABLE. Make this in August or September.
Two recipes share this page: a moulded apricot custard cream, which is straightforward for a modern cook, and an apricot jam whose method should not be followed. The caution above applies to the jam, and to it alone.
- Why the jam failsThe blanched kernels are the problem: apricot stones contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernels are chewed or digested. Adding a jar's worth of them to preserves was routine Victorian practice and is not advisable now. The sealing method compounds it — oiled paper and egg-glazed tissue is a mould barrier, not an airtight seal, and the sugar quantity has dropped out of the text entirely ("allow lb. of sugar" is missing its fraction), so the preserving ratio is unknown. Use a current tested jam recipe.
- The hinge in the cream"On no account let it boil." The jug standing in boiling water is a bain-marie; the custard should be stirred until it coats the back of a spoon, around 180F/82C, and pulled off at once. Above that the yolks scramble and no amount of sieving recovers the texture.
- GelatineVictorian gelatine was unstandardised and generally weaker than modern powder. For a quart mould of this richness, about 1/2 oz (roughly 4 teaspoons, or two standard sachets) of modern powdered gelatine is likely nearer the mark; bloom it in cold water, then dissolve rather than boiling it as directed.
- Quart mould and yieldAn imperial quart is 40 fl oz, about 5 US cups. Twelve apricots is roughly 1 1/2 lb of fruit. The finished cream serves six to eight.
- "Thin marmalade"Here marmalade means simply a smooth cooked fruit pulp, not a citrus preserve. Twenty to thirty minutes of gentle boiling with the syrup, then a sieve, gives a purée thick enough to hold its own against the custard.
- Tinned fruitDrain it well and cut the syrup sugar back sharply — tinned apricots are already packed in sweetened syrup, and the recipe's full 1/4 lb will make the cream cloying.
- UnmouldingOil the mould with a flavourless oil, not butter, which sets opaque and streaks the surface. To turn out, dip the mould in warm water for a few seconds and invert onto a wetted dish so the cream can be slid into place.
- Chilling"Set it on ice" means the refrigerator. Allow at least four hours, better overnight, before turning out.
Moulded creams were the centrepiece of the Victorian cold table: a sweetened custard, set with gelatine or isinglass, coloured and flavoured with whatever fruit the season offered, and turned out of a shaped copper mould at the end of dinner. The seasonal note here — August, September, October — is doing real work, since English apricots ripened on walls and in glasshouses for only a few weeks, and the concession to "tinned fruit" in winter marks the point at which commercial canning had become respectable enough for Mrs Beeton's readers. The apricot itself came west from Central Asia, and the Roman belief that it arrived by way of Armenia is why botanists still call it Prunus armeniaca. Note that "marmalade" in the instructions carries its older, wider sense of any fruit boiled to a pulp, a usage broader than the modern one, which has since narrowed to Seville oranges.