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New England Apricot Pudding
Soak half a pound of apricots over night. Stew until tender with a half cup of sugar. Arrange squares of toasted bread, well buttered and sprinkled with nutmeg or cinnamon, in the bottom and around the sides of a pudding dish. Pour in the boiling hot apricots and cover the dish so that no steam can escape, and let it cool gradually. When ready to serve, cover the top with boiled icing garnished with bits of jelly.
A cold charlotte built on buttered toast rather than cake or crumbs, thickened by nothing more than the toast absorbing hot fruit syrup. The whole thing hinges on the covered dish: trapped steam is what turns the toast into pudding.
- The apricots are driedHalf a pound of dried apricot halves, soaked overnight in water to cover, then stewed with the sugar until tender, as the recipe directs; the soaking water can go into the pot. Unsulfured fruit gives a browner, deeper result; sulfured stays orange.
- Keep the syrup generousStew with enough liquid that the fruit is loose and pourable, not reduced to paste. The toast has to soak up several tablespoons of syrup per slice, and dry fruit gives you dry, leathery bread.
- Toast, butter, spice, in that orderToast the bread first, butter it while hot so the butter soaks in, then dust with nutmeg or cinnamon. A firm white sandwich loaf works; crusts cut off, squares roughly 2 inches. Line the bottom and press the squares up the sides, butter side in.
- Cover it tightlyPour the apricots on boiling hot and seal the dish at once with a lid or foil. The steam has nowhere to go but into the bread. The recipe asks only that it cool gradually under the cover, without lifting it.
- "Boiled icing" means Italian meringueSugar syrup boiled to the soft-ball stage, about 240F, poured in a thin stream into stiffly beaten egg whites and beaten until it holds a peak and cools. Roughly 1 cup sugar, 1/3 cup water and 2 egg whites is enough to cover a 1-quart dish.
- Ice at the last momentBoiled icing weeps and slumps on a wet, cold surface. Spread it on just before the pudding goes to the table, then dot with bits of currant or apple jelly for contrast.
- Dish and yieldA 1- to 1 1/2-quart pudding basin or straight-sided dish. Serves six, spooned out rather than turned out; this does not unmold cleanly.
The recipe belongs to a wide family of thrift puddings in which stale or toasted bread stands in for pastry and cake: apple charlotte, brown betty, the English "summer pudding" set with berry juice. It is exactly this sort of dish, respectable enough for company with icing on top, but built from a loaf that was past its best. The "New England" label likely reflects the region's long habit of cooking with dried fruit rather than any particular local origin; before reliable refrigeration and cheap canned goods, dried apricots, apples and peaches were among the few fruits a Northern household could count on in winter. Boiled icing, a meringue stabilized by hot syrup, was often used as a festive finish in the period, prized because it set firm without needing to be baked.