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Apple Custard
Take some apple marmalade or stewed apples, and warm up with a little finely-powdered sugar, let this stand in a basin until cold. Beat up some eggs until very light and stir and beat them well into some new milk; a little cream enriches the custard. Mix this up with the apples, pour into a deep dish, and bake for twenty minutes.
Oscar gives proportions for nothing, which was normal for a chef writing for other cooks. The recipe works if you treat it as a standard baked custard carrying a fruit purée, and set the oven low.
- Working proportionsA workable ratio is 3 whole eggs to 2 cups of milk (or 1 1/2 cups milk and 1/2 cup cream), with about 1 cup of thick apple puree and 3-4 tablespoons sugar. That makes roughly a quart of mixture and serves four to six.
- "New milk"Fresh, unskimmed milk straight from the dairy. Whole milk is the equivalent; the cream Oscar suggests brings it closer to the richer nineteenth-century product.
- Apple marmaladeNot citrus marmalade but apples stewed down to a thick, spreadable purée with sugar, close to a loose apple butter. Stewed apples work, but drain or reduce them first, or the custard will weep.
- Cool the apples firstThis is the hinge. Hot fruit stirred into beaten eggs scrambles them and the custard sets grainy, which is why the recipe insists it stand in a basin until cold.
- Oven temperatureBake at 325F, and set the dish in a roasting pan of hot water reaching halfway up the sides. Custard baked dry and hot curdles at the edges before the centre sets.
- Twenty minutes is optimisticThat timing suits a shallow dish or individual cups. A deep dish will want 40-55 minutes. Judge by set rather than clock: the centre should wobble as a mass and register 170-175F.
- Don't over-beatWhatever 'very light' meant to Oscar, excess foam bakes into a bubbled, spongy top; skim any froth off the surface before it goes into the oven.
- ServingEat warm or thoroughly chilled, with a dusting of cinnamon or a spoonful of cream. Refrigerate leftovers and finish within two days.
Baked apple custard belongs to a long line of English fruit-and-egg puddings that carried over to American tables. Oscar Tschirky compiled his book at the Waldorf, and it was published in 1896. The absence of quantities is itself informative: Oscar was maitre d'hotel rather than chef, and a great many recipes in the volume give no measurements at all. The phrase "new milk" dates the text as clearly as anything: it distinguished the morning's fresh, unseparated milk from skimmed or older milk in an era before refrigeration made the distinction moot.