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Amber Pudding
Make as Snow Pudding I, using cider instead of boiling water, and one-fourth cup boiling water to dissolve gelatine, omitting lemon juice, and sweeten to taste.
This is a variation, not a standalone recipe: it sends you to Snow Pudding I, which sets gelatine with sugar and liquid, then beats in raw egg whites until the whole is white and foamy. Two things in that chain do not meet current practice, and neither can be fixed by adjusting a time or a temperature.
- Raw egg white, never heatedThe whites in a snow pudding are beaten cold into a gelatine base and served chilled. Nothing in the method brings them to a temperature that would address Salmonella, and the pudding then sits for hours in the mould. A current recipe using pasteurised whites or a cooked meringue should be followed instead.
- The custard sauce that goes with itSnow Pudding I is served with a soft (boiled) custard, though this variation does not mention one. Period recipes stop the custard when it "coats the spoon" rather than by thermometer; that consistency generally corresponds to a temperature at or above the safe range for eggs, but it is judged by eye, and the sauce is then held cold.
- Cider, in 1896Cider -- In American cookbooks of this period "cider" usually means pressed apple cider, sweet or only lightly worked, rather than the bottled hard cider sold under that name in Britain; fermented cider was common in New England too, so the intended strength is not certain. Unpasteurised sweet cider carries a well-documented risk from E. coli.
- Gelatine of the periodA "box" of granulated gelatine in this era was about an ounce, so a quarter box corresponds roughly to one modern envelope. The quarter cup of boiling water here is only for dissolving the softened gelatine; the cider makes up the bulk of the liquid and is evidently not boiled, which appears to be why the instruction separates the two.
- "Sweeten to taste"Farmer gives Snow Pudding I a full cup of sugar against a quarter cup of lemon juice. With the lemon omitted and sweet cider standing in, that quantity would likely be cloying, which may be why the direction is left open rather than fixed.
Snow pudding belongs to the age of packaged gelatine, when granulated gelatine sold in boxes replaced the labour of calf's-foot jelly and American cookbooks filled chapters with moulded, whipped and layered versions of it. Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book treats the form as a template: one base recipe followed by a run of variations that swap the liquid or the flavouring, of which this is one. The name most likely describes the colour, apple cider in place of water tinting the foam a pale amber rather than the usual white, though the book does not say so. Cider was a cheap and abundant liquid in New England kitchens, particularly in autumn. The reliance on uncooked egg white for volume was usual in this period and is the detail that has not survived; the same effect is now got from pasteurised whites or a cooked Italian meringue.