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Pommes a La Vesuve
1068. Pile some apple marmalade high in a dish. Get ready some macaroni boiled in water, but well drained, and afterwards sweetened with white sugar and flavoured with brandy; cut it into short lengths, but do not mince it; lay it as a bordering round the mountain of marmalado; plentifully dust the whole over with powdered white sugar, and on the apex form a crater with about half a dozen good-sized lumps of sugar; pour a good gill of brandy over the top, and immediately before serving set fire to it, and introduce it at table flaming.
A Victorian showpiece dessert: a cone of stiff apple purée ringed with sweetened macaroni, crowned with sugar lumps and set alight at the table. The whole thing depends on the apple being dry enough to hold its shape.
- Apple marmaladeNot citrus marmalade. Here it means apples cooked down with sugar to a stiff, almost paste-like purée that will stand in a mound without slumping. Cook it further and drier than you would ordinary apple sauce.
- A gill of brandyAn imperial gill is a quarter of a pint, about 5 fl oz or a generous half cup. That is a lot of spirit for one dish and it will burn for some time before it goes out.
- The macaroniNineteenth-century macaroni was long, fairly thick tubing sold in lengths, closer to modern bucatini or ziti than to elbows. Boil it in water only, drain well, then toss with sugar and a little brandy while still warm so it absorbs the flavour, and cut into lengths of an inch or two.
- Cook the pasta softThis is a dessert, not a pasta course. Al dente texture reads as raw here; take it a couple of minutes past the packet time so it is tender against the soft apple.
- Sugar lumps for the craterCube sugar works as intended: the porous lumps soak up spirit and hold a flame far better than loose powdered sugar, which mostly just melts. Arrange six of them in a ring at the summit to make the crater.
- Lighting itWarm the brandy in a small pan until it is hot but not simmering, pour it over the sugar lumps, and light it there rather than tipping spirit from the bottle toward a flame. Carry the dish in on a tray, keep it clear of overhead fabric and low ceilings, and have a lid or metal tray to hand to smother it.
- ServingLet the flame die of its own accord before spooning it out, and expect the top layer of powdered sugar to have caramelised into a thin crust, which is much of the point.