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Bird's-Nest Pudding
Pare and core without quartering enough quick-cooking tart apples to fill a pudding-pan; make a custard of one quart milk and the yolks of six eggs; sweeten, spice, pour over apples, and bake; when done, use the whites of eggs beaten stiff with six table-spoons white sugar; spread on the custard, brown lightly, and serve either hot or cold. If necessary, apples may be baked a short time before adding custard.
A baked custard with whole cored apples standing in it, finished with meringue. The one thing to get right is the mismatch in cooking times: whole apples take far longer than custard, so par-bake them unless they are genuinely soft-fleshed.
- Par-bake the applesThe final sentence is the hinge, not an afterthought. Set the cored apples in the buttered dish and bake at 350F for 15-25 minutes until a knife slides in with slight resistance, then add the custard. Otherwise the custard sets and weeps long before the apples give way.
- "Quick-cooking tart apples"Varieties that collapse readily: McIntosh, Cortland, Gravenstein. Avoid Granny Smith and Honeycrisp, which hold their shape stubbornly. Count on 6 to 8 apples for a 2-quart dish.
- Custard proportionsOne quart milk to six yolks is a soft, spoonable set. Sweeten with 1/2 to 2/3 cup sugar; whole milk or milk with a little cream gives the best body.
- SpiceThe unspecified "spice" is most likely grated nutmeg, possibly with cinnamon. Something in the range of 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of nutmeg over a quart suits; vanilla is not called for but is not out of place.
- Oven and water bathBake at 325-350F. A pan of hot water around the dish is not in the original but prevents the custard curdling at the edges. It is done when the center jiggles as a unit and reads 170-175F, roughly 45 to 60 minutes after the custard goes in.
- The meringueSix whites with six tablespoons sugar is a lean, old-style meringue. Beat to stiff peaks, spread to the rim so it seals to the dish, and brown at 400F for 6-8 minutes or under the broiler for a minute or two, watching it.
- VesselA "pudding-pan" here is any straight-sided baking dish deep enough for the apples to stand upright with custard around them; a 2- to 2 1/2-quart casserole works.
- YieldOne apple per person, six to eight servings. Cut cold, it slices more cleanly; hot, it must be spooned.
Bird's-nest pudding is a New England name for apples baked in custard, the fruit sitting in the pale custard like eggs in a nest; some 19th-century books use the same title for apples baked under a batter or a pie crust instead, so the name traveled further than any single method. It appears in The Dixie Cook Book, one of the large compiled household volumes of the 1880s generally credited to Estelle Woods Wilcox, whose contents were drawn broadly from Northern and Southern contributors alike rather than being strictly regional. The recipe uses yolks for the custard and the reserved whites for a meringue lid, a division that serves texture and appearance as much as anything else.