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Bird's-Nest Pudding
Peel and core eight apples, but do not break them. Arrange them in a good-sized pudding-dish, and fill the places where the cores were with sugar. Then, with one and one-half pints of milk, three ounces of flour, and four or five eggs, make a batter; pour this over the apples, and bake until the fruit is done. For the sauce, beat one-fourth pound of butter until very light, add one-half pound of powdered white sugar, and one-fourth of a pint of cream. Stand the bowl containing the mixture in a basin of hot water, and stir until all is creamy. Two minutes should be sufficient. Serve in a sauceboat.
A batter pudding baked around whole cored apples, served with a warm creamed-butter sauce. It behaves like a clafoutis, and the same rules apply: a hot dish, a well-rested batter, and enough time for the fruit to collapse into tenderness.
- OvenNo temperature is given. 350F suits it. Expect 50 to 65 minutes, until the batter is puffed and set and a skewer slides into the apples without resistance.
- The measurements in modern termsOne and one-half pints of milk is 3 cups. Three ounces of flour is about two-thirds of a cup, weighed rather than scooped. The sauce takes 1 stick of butter (4 oz), about 2 cups of powdered sugar (8 oz), and one-half cup of cream.
- Choose apples that hold togetherThe apples must stay whole through a long bake, so use a firm variety with some acid: Granny Smith, Braeburn, Northern Spy. Softer supermarket apples slump and leak juice into the batter, which then never sets.
- Batter ratioThree ounces of flour to three cups of milk and four or five eggs gives a very thin, custardy batter, closer to a baked custard than a Yorkshire pudding. Whisk it smooth, let it stand 20 minutes so the flour hydrates, then strain it over the apples.
- Dish and depthA "good-sized pudding-dish" here means one that holds eight upright apples with room for three cups of liquid around them: a deep 3-quart baking dish or a 9x13. Butter it well, set it on a sheet pan, and pour the batter in once the apples are arranged, filling to about two-thirds the height of the fruit.
- The sauce will break if you rush itThis is a hard sauce loosened with cream, warmed only to melting point. Keep the water in the basin hot but not simmering and stir constantly; direct heat or boiling water will split the butter out. Two minutes is realistic if the butter was properly creamed first.
- YieldEight apples, one per person. The sauce makes roughly a cup and a half, which is generous for eight.
Bird's-nest pudding is an old Anglo-American nursery and farmhouse dish, said to be named for the way the cored apples sit in the batter like eggs in a nest; the name appears in New England cookbooks well before Oscar Tschirky's 1896 volume, sometimes with the apples set in custard rather than batter. It belongs to the family of English batter puddings baked around fruit, of which the French clafoutis is a relative. The sauce is a creamed butter and sugar sauce, warmed just to the point of pouring.