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Individual Macaroon Puddings
Have as many egg or custard cups as there will probably be orders, about 40, and brush the insides with melted butter. Place in the bottom of each a small round sponge drop. Cover that with a thin layer of finely chopped raisins; on that place a macaroon and in that way fill the cup. The cakes must be split if not thin. Make a rich custard with 7 eggs beaten n a quart of thin cream and 2 ounces of sugar. Fill in with a spoon all the cakes will absorb. Steam half an hour. Serve in the cups with whipped cream, sweetened and flavored, piled on top.
A bakeshop recipe written for volume — forty cups at a time — but it scales down cleanly to six or eight. The whole thing hinges on gentle steam heat and on not overfilling the custard.
- Scale it downSeven eggs to a quart of cream fills about 40 small custard cups, since most of each cup is cake. For six to eight ramekins use 1 to 2 eggs and 1/2 to 3/4 cup of cream, keeping roughly 1 egg to each 1/2 cup of cream, with sugar to taste.
- Thin cream"Thin cream" here means a lighter cream rather than a heavy one; today's light cream or half-and-half is the closest supermarket equivalent. Heavy cream alone makes the custard cloying and dense. Fat percentages were not standardised at the time, so exact figures should not be read back into the term.
- SugarTwo ounces (a scant 1/3 cup) to a full quart is deliberately restrained -- the sponge drops, raisins and macaroons carry the sweetness, and the recipe sweetens the whipped cream on top separately. Do not increase it without tasting the assembled pudding first.
- Sponge drops and macaroonsSponge drops are small drop sponge cakes, roughly ladyfinger batter piped in rounds; ladyfingers cut to fit work as well. The recipe does not specify the type of macaroon, but the dense, chewy almond sort is the likely intent here rather than coconut macaroons or French macaron sandwiches.
- Filling the cupsAdd custard a spoonful at a time and wait for it to soak in before adding more. The cakes drink slowly, and a cup filled too fast will overflow in the steamer and set as a skin on top rather than a set custard through the middle.
- Steaming setupCover each cup and set them on a rack over simmering -- not hard-boiling -- water. Hard boiling drives the custard past the point where it holds and it will curdle and weep. The book calls only for steaming; an oven water bath is a modern substitution, not the original method.
- DonenessHalf an hour is right for small cups. The custard should be just set at the edges with a slight wobble at the center; an instant-read thermometer in the custard shows 170-175F.
- ServingThey are served in the cups rather than turned out, which means the butter-brushed interiors matter less than they would for unmolding. Pipe the sweetened whipped cream on only at the moment of service, or it slumps.
The American Pastry Cook belongs to the run of trade manuals written for hotel and restaurant bakeshops around the turn of the twentieth century, and the assumption of "about 40 orders" is the tell: this is a dish designed to be assembled in advance and steamed to order. The technique itself is much older -- a cabinet pudding, layered cake and dried fruit soaked in custard and steamed in a mold, was standard English hotel and household fare through the nineteenth century, and the individual cup version is that idea portioned for a la carte service. Substituting macaroons for the usual sponge or bread gives an almond note common in pastry work of the period.