With Cream
No doubt derives its name from its appearance when baked in a small pudding dish and set on the table whole. The batter rises round the edges and the apples might be supposed to resemble eggs. In hotel service it is but an empty name, and this receipt makes the pudding sufficiently soft and custard like to stand the waiting of a long dinner. 10 ounces of flour. 3 pints of milk. 1/4 pound of butter, melted. 1/4 pound of sugar. 6 eggs. Salt. Apples enough for two three quart pudding pans. A little more sugar and butter to bake them with. Cinnamon or nutmeg. Pare and core the apples, put them in the pans whole. Fill the core holes with sugar and butter; grate nutmeg; allow water enough to wet the pans, then bake with a thick sheet of paper over till done, basting with their syrup occasionally. Then mix the other ingredients to a smooth batter, beat it well; pour over the cooked apples; bake half an hour.
First rate cooking apples small enough to be served entire with the batter round them are most desirable. Cream or cream sauce, or wine or lemon sauce. Pouding a la St. Croix.
This is a hotel-scale bird's-nest pudding: whole baked apples set in a thin custard batter, closer to a clafoutis than to anything stiff. The batter is deliberately loose so the pudding stays soft through a long service.
- The hingeBake the apples through before the batter goes in. If they are still firm, the batter sets around raw fruit and the whole dish weeps; if they are collapsing, they will muddy the custard. They should yield to a skewer but hold their shape.
- Measures10 ounces flour is about 2 1/4 cups; 3 pints milk is 6 cups; 1/4 pound butter is 1 stick (1/2 cup); 1/4 pound sugar is a scant 2/3 cup. Salt is unmeasured — a teaspoon for this quantity.
- Scale and yieldTwo three-quart pans is banquet output, comfortably 14 to 18 portions. Halved into a single 9x13 dish it works well: 5 oz flour, 3 cups milk, 3 eggs, 4 tbsp butter, 1/3 cup sugar, six to eight small apples.
- OvenThe book assumes a hotel range. Bake the apples covered at 350F for 35 to 50 minutes depending on size, then pour on the batter and give it 30 to 40 minutes at 375F, until puffed at the edges and just set in the centre.
- The paper"A thick sheet of paper" is a lid: parchment or foil laid loosely over the pan so the apples steam rather than scorch. Remove it before the batter goes in so the top can brown.
- "Water enough to wet the pans"A shallow film, perhaps 1/4 inch, no more. It combines with the melting sugar and butter to make the syrup you baste with; too much and the batter will not set cleanly over it.
- ApplesSmall, firm baking apples that hold their shape whole — Northern Spy, Rome, Braeburn, Golden Delicious. Modern dessert apples bred for eating raw tend to slump. Leave them peeled and cored as directed; the hollow holds the sugar and butter.
- The batterMelted butter into cold milk will seize into flecks. Whisk flour, sugar, salt and eggs to a smooth paste first, loosen with the milk, then stream in the butter warm. Let it stand 20 minutes before pouring.
- SauceCream is the plain option; the wine or lemon sauce called for is the period's hot sweet pudding sauce, thickened with a little cornstarch or butter and flour and sharpened with juice or sherry.
Bird's-nest pudding was a standing New England dish through the nineteenth century — whole peeled apples bedded in batter or custard, the pale fruit read as eggs in a nest, which is the derivation this book offers. The book is addressed to hotel and restaurant cooks rather than housewives, and the note that "in hotel service it is but an empty name" is characteristic: the writer's complaint is that the apples were not in practice served entire. His fix is to slacken the batter until it bakes as custard, which holds without toughening while a long table dinner works its way through the courses. Pouding à la St. Croix is the sort of menu French such kitchens applied to plain dishes.