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Apple Souffle
On account of the scarcity of culinary terms, the word soufflle has to stand for a great number of light articles that may have very little resemblance to each other. This consists of a border of dry stewed apple raised in a large dish or an ice cream saucer, as the case may be, the hollow middle filled with boiled custard and whipped white of egg and sugar, like the frosting on lemon pies, piled on top. It need not be baked, but the top may be browned by holding a red hot shovel over it on the shelf in the oven. Served cold.
This is an assembly rather than a baked pudding: three components made separately, then built cold. The hinge is the apple, which must be stewed down until it is stiff enough to hold a wall.
- "Dry stewed apple"Cook peeled, sliced apples with sugar and almost no added water until the pulp mounds on a spoon and holds a shape — think thick apple butter, not sauce. A wet purée will slump and the custard will bleed into it. Choose an apple that collapses readily when stewed, such as Bramley; firmer varieties hold their shape and will not give a smooth wall.
- The borderPipe or spoon the cold apple in a ring around the edge of the dish, leaving a well in the middle. Chill the ring firm before you pour in the custard.
- Boiled custardIn this period that means a stirred custard sauce, not a baked one: roughly 4 egg yolks and 2 oz sugar to a pint of milk, cooked over low heat to about 175F, until it coats the spoon. Cool it fully before filling.
- "Like the frosting on lemon pies"A soft meringue — about 2 tablespoons sugar per egg white, beaten to firm peaks. It is piled on, not folded in.
- The red hot shovelA coal shovel heated in the fire served as a salamander, browning the meringue from above without warming the custard. Use a broiler on its highest setting with the dish on the top shelf for 30-60 seconds, or a kitchen torch. The point is speed: the dessert is meant to stay cold.
- Raw whitesThe meringue here gets only seconds of radiant heat, so the whites are essentially uncooked. If serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurized whites or a cooked Italian meringue.
- VesselsAn "ice cream saucer" was a small shallow dish, often glass, of the sort sold for serving ices; a wide dessert glass or coupe is a reasonable modern stand-in. The recipe gives no quantities, so scale the components to the dish you use.
- TimingEverything can be made a day ahead and refrigerated, but meringue it and brown it just before serving — soft meringue weeps within a couple of hours.
The author's opening complaint is the most interesting thing on the page: by the late nineteenth century soufflé had become a catch-all in English-language kitchens for anything lightened with beaten egg white, whether it rose in the oven, was set with gelatine, or — as here — never saw heat at all. French usage was narrower, and the looseness of the borrowed vocabulary is what the author is objecting to. What is described is closer to what other books of the era call an apple meringue or apple trifle: stewed fruit, custard sauce and a meringue crown, browned with a salamander or a heated shovel because a coal range gave poor top heat.