Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Apple Custard with Vanilla
Apple Custard with Vanilla
Strongly flavor with vanilla half a pound of marmalade (apple), and squeeze through a tammy cloth. Work up three ounces of warmed butter with a spoon in a basin until creamed, gradually putting into it the yolks of a dozen eggs and the white of one. When this is worked frothy, add two tablespoonfuls of finely-powdered loaf sugar and the apple marmalade. Stir well and throw in a couple of handfuls of ratafia biscuits. Pour the whole into a buttered mould, and let it poach for some time in the bain-marie. Turn out into a warmed dish, and mask with almond cream, thickened with apricot marmalade.
A rich moulded egg custard in the French entremets tradition, thickened almost entirely with yolks and set in a water bath. The instructions assume a professional pastry section, so several terms need translating before you start.
- Apple marmaladeNot citrus marmalade. This is a thick, reduced apple purée — apple butter consistency, cooked down until a spoon drawn through it leaves a track. Half a pound is about one cup.
- Tammy clothA worsted straining cloth. A fine-mesh sieve or a chinois pressed with a ladle does the same job; the point is a purée with no fibre or skin in it.
- Loaf sugar, finely powderedSugar was sold in hard cones and scraped as needed. Use superfine (caster) sugar; two tablespoons is deliberately restrained, since the apple purée carries most of the sweetness.
- Ratafia biscuitsSmall, dry, bitter-almond macaroons, roughly a thumbnail across. Italian amaretti secchi, broken up, are the closest thing on a shelf today; two handfuls is perhaps 2 to 3 ounces.
- The hinge: gentle heat"Poach in the bain-marie" means the buttered mould standing in hot — not boiling — water. Keep the water around 170–180F, over the lowest burner or in a low oven; the recipe specifies neither. Twelve yolks will curdle and weep if the water simmers.
- How long, and how to tell"Some time" is roughly 45 to 60 minutes for a mould of about 1½ quarts. It is set when the centre reaches about 175F and a knife comes out clean; let it stand 10 minutes before turning out, or the edges tear.
- Almond creamA pouring sauce, not the almond frangipane used in tarts: milk or cream infused with ground almonds, strained, and here thickened and coloured with sieved apricot preserve. Serve it warm and spoon it over the unmoulded custard.
- YieldVery rich — a small serving goes far. Expect 8 portions, and plan on using the remaining egg whites the same day.
Oscar Tschirky came to the Waldorf in 1893 as ma tre d'h tel and published his Cook Book in 1896, a fat compendium that borrowed freely from the French professional repertoire then dominating American hotel kitchens. This custard belongs squarely to that repertoire: a moulded cr me set in a bain-marie, unmoulded, and masked with a sauce, the kind of sweet entremets codified by Car me and Gouff . The ratafia biscuits are the giveaway of its age ons, often said to be named for the almond-flavoured cordial they were traditionally served with, once a standard pantry item in both English and French kitchens and now surviving mainly as Italian amaretti. Apple pur e cooked down to a stiff "marmalade" was ordinary practice, and its acidity is what keeps a dozen yolks from tasting merely fat.