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Surprise Loaf
Bake a cabinet pudding with sliced fruit.. and when cold remove from the pan; cover with peach whip, made from preserved peaches, press macaroons along the base and sprinkle crushed nuts over the top. Cut in slices to serve.
This is an assembly recipe rather than a method — it assumes you already know how to make a cabinet pudding and a fruit whip, both of which were staples of the period. The hinge is the pudding itself: unless it is baked firm and chilled thoroughly, it will not turn out of the pan or cut into clean slices.
- What a cabinet pudding isA custard pudding built on cubed sponge cake, stale bread or ladyfingers layered with dried or candied fruit, soaked in an egg-and-milk custard and baked or steamed in a mold. Reckon on roughly 4 eggs to a pint of milk for a mixture firm enough to unmold.
- Bake it in a water bathThe recipe gives no temperature or time. Cabinet puddings were baked or steamed; if baking, set the mold in a pan of hot water and reckon on a moderate oven (around 325F) until a knife slipped into the centre comes out clean, perhaps 45 minutes to an hour for a 1-quart mold. Direct oven heat risks curdling the custard, and a curdled pudding will weep when sliced.
- Chill before unmolding"When cold" means cold all the way through — several hours, ideally overnight in the refrigerator. A pudding unmolded warm will slump and no amount of peach whip will hold it together.
- Preserved peachesThese are peaches put up in heavy syrup, either home-canned or bought. Drain them well and press out the syrup before puréeing, or the whip will be too loose to cling to the sides of the loaf. Canned peaches in syrup are the direct modern equivalent.
- Peach whipPeriod whips were made either by beating fruit pulp into stiff egg whites or by folding the pulp into whipped cream. The cream version is more stable and avoids uncooked egg; if you want the lighter egg-white version, use pasteurized whites.
- The macaroonsThe recipe does not say which kind. Most likely almond macaroons — crisp, meringue-based, closer to amaretti than to the French macaron — though coconut macaroons were also common in American kitchens by this date. They form a decorative border along the base; they will soften against the whip, so press them on as late as you can.
- YieldNo quantity is given. A 1-quart loaf pan or charlotte mold would give something like 8 to 10 slices. Serve cold, and cut with a thin knife wiped between slices.
Cabinet pudding — also called chancellor's pudding — is generally traced to the English and French repertoire of the early nineteenth century, a thrifty way to turn stale sponge cake and dried fruit into a molded custard grand enough for a dinner table. By the time the Butterick Cook Book appeared, American cooks had inherited it along with the whole apparatus of molded and layered cold desserts, which suited households that wanted a showpiece made in advance rather than something served hot from the oven. The "surprise" here is the plainest kind: an ordinary baked pudding disguised under whip, macaroons and nuts so that it arrives at the table looking like something else entirely. Recipes of this sort, written as three lines of assembly instructions, also tell you what the book expected of its readers — that a cabinet pudding and a fruit whip needed no explanation at all.