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Orange and Macaroon Pudding
½ pound almond macaroons
½ cup sugar
1 pint milk
2 oranges
4 eggs
Soak the almond macaroons in the milk until soft. Beat the eggs and add to them the sugar and the grated rind of one orange. Do not grate in any of the white pith, as it spoils the flavor. Stir the mixture carefully into the macaroons and add the juice of two oranges. Pour into an oiled mold and set on a stand or ring in a kettle of boiling water. Simmer steadily for an hour. Serve hot with orange sauce.
A steamed almond-macaroon custard, closer to a bread pudding than to a boiled suet pudding. Two things decide whether it succeeds: the kind of macaroon you buy, and keeping the water at a bare simmer.
- Which macaroonsAlmond macaroons here means the crisp, chewy almond-and-egg-white kind — Italian amaretti or French almond macaroons — not coconut macaroons and not sandwiched macarons. Half a pound is about 225 g; slightly stale ones soak up the milk best.
- A pint of milkTwo cups by American measure. If you are working from a British edition, an imperial pint is 20 fl oz, which will give a looser, more custardy pudding.
- The hinge: acid and heatOrange juice added to a raw egg-and-milk mixture will curdle it if the mixture is warm or if the pudding is cooked hard. Stir the juice in last, off the heat, and keep the water at a lazy simmer rather than a rolling boil for the whole hour.
- Zest without pithThe instruction is worth taking seriously — the white layer under the peel is bitter. A microplane over the fruit, turning as you go, takes the coloured oil-rich layer only.
- Setting up the steam"A stand or ring in a kettle of boiling water" is a bain-marie: set the mold on a trivet, folded cloth or ring of foil so it does not touch the bottom of the pot, and pour in boiling water to come halfway up the mold. Cover the mold with foil or a tied cloth so condensation does not water down the top, and lid the pot.
- DonenessAfter an hour the pudding should be just set at the centre — around 175°F on a thermometer — and a knife inserted near the middle should come out clean. Add water to the pot as it evaporates.
- UnmoldingOil the mold generously (a neutral oil or soft butter) and let the pudding rest 10 minutes before turning out, or it will slump. The mixture makes appreciably more than a quart once the macaroons are counted, so use a mold of at least a quart and a half, or six individual ramekins; ramekins will need considerably less than the hour.
- Orange sauce and yieldThe recipe calls for an orange sauce but does not give one; a sauce of orange juice and sugar, lightly thickened and finished with butter, is the usual sort. The quantities should serve about six.
Macaroon puddings were one way of using the almond macaroons that bakeries and confectioners sold by weight — like stale bread or sponge cake, they swelled obligingly in milk. The almond macaroon is much older than the coconut version most Americans now picture: it is built on ground almonds, sugar and egg white, and is traditionally traced to Italian and French convent baking. Butterick, better known for dress patterns, published household compendiums like this one for the same audience of middle-class women running a house with limited help. Oranges were becoming an everyday winter fruit rather than a Christmas-stocking treat as Florida and California shipments grew.