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Manhattan Pudding
Mix juice of 4 oranges and 2 lemons, sweeten to taste Put mixture in mould. Whip one pint cream and add 3/4 cup powdered sugar, 1 cup chopped nuts and 1½ tsp. vanilla. Pour this over the first mixture. Cover with paper and pack in salt and ice, and let stand 3 hours. One-half rule serves five people. MRS. LEON FELTON.
This is a still-frozen dessert, not a baked or boiled pudding: a layer of sweetened citrus ice under a layer of nut-studded frozen whipped cream. The ice-and-salt packing was the only freezer the original cook had.
- The hinge: do not stir the layersThe juice goes into the mould first and the whipped cream is poured over it, so the two set as distinct strata. Chill the mould and the juice before assembling, and pour the cream gently over a spoon so it floats rather than sinking through.
- Freezer instead of ice and saltA modern freezer at 0F does the same work as the packed mould. Use a metal loaf pan or bombe mould, press waxed paper or parchment onto the surface, wrap in foil, and freeze at least 4 hours; overnight is better than the original 3 hours because a home freezer has no brine in contact with the metal.
- If you do pack it in iceA commonly given proportion is about three parts crushed ice to one part coarse rock salt, though period sources vary; layer it around the sealed mould in a bucket, draining the brine and renewing the packing as it melts. The paper covering matters here because salt water will find any gap in the lid.
- MeasuresOne pint of cream is 2 cups of heavy cream, which whips to roughly a quart. Four oranges give roughly 1 to 1 1/2 cups of juice and two lemons about 1/4 to 1/3 cup, so expect a shallow citrus layer under a deep cream layer.
- "Sweeten to taste" has a limitThe juice layer needs a good deal of sugar, on the order of 1/3 to 1/2 cup, or it freezes into a hard sour brick. Too much and it will not set firm at all, since sugar depresses the freezing point; taste for something distinctly sweeter than you would drink.
- Powdered sugar and nutsPowdered sugar dissolves quickly in cream, and the small amount of cornstarch it contains may help the frozen cream hold. The nuts are unspecified; walnuts, pecans or blanched almonds all suit, chopped fine so the dessert slices cleanly.
- Yield and unmouldingHalf the rule serves five, so the full quantity serves about ten. Dip the mould in warm water for a few seconds, turn it out, and let it stand 10 minutes before slicing so the citrus layer loses its glassy hardness.
The Philathea Cook Book belongs to a large family of American church fundraising cookbooks: Philathea classes were the young women's adult Bible-study groups of the Baraca-Philathea movement, dating from the 1890s, following the Baraca classes, though the Baraca-Philathea Union and the movement's wide spread belong to the early twentieth century, and their compiled recipes carry the contributor's name as a matter of course. Frozen puddings like this one were a mark of some ambition in a home kitchen before mechanical refrigeration, since the cook had to buy or cut ice, crush it, and pack the mould with rock salt for hours; the fact that it needs no churning is exactly the point, as it could be made without an ice-cream freezer. Naming such desserts after cities and hotels was a fashion of the era rather than a sign of any particular origin, and "Manhattan" here is generally best read as a claim to metropolitan smartness, not to a documented New York source.