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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 maître d'hôtel 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 crème set in a bain-marie, unmoulded, and masked with a sauce, the kind of sweet entremets codified by Carême and Gouffé. The ratafia biscuits are the giveaway of its age — small bitter-almond macaroons, 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 purée cooked down to a stiff "marmalade" was ordinary practice, and its acidity is what keeps a dozen yolks from tasting merely fat.