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Apple Custard
Mrs. F. B. Orr.
Pare, core, and quarter one dozen tart apples, strew into it the grated rind of one lemon; stew until tender in very little water; then mash smooth with back of a spoon. To one and a-half pints of strained apple, add one and a-quarter pounds sugar; leave it until cold; beat six eggs light and stir alternately into one quart of milk with the apples; put into cups or deep dish, and bake twenty minutes; to be eaten cold.
A baked apple custard in the nineteenth-century style: sweetened applesauce thinned with milk and eggs, then set in the oven. The original assumes you know how a custard behaves, so the two things worth fixing are the temperature and the sugar.
- The hinge: gentle heatNo temperature is given. Bake at 325F in a water bath; the custard is done when the centre is just barely wobbly and reads about 170-175F. Above roughly 185F the eggs curdle and the apple will weep liquid as it cools.
- Twenty minutes is for cups onlySmall custard cups may set in 20-30 minutes, but a single deep dish will need 50-70 minutes. Judge by the set, not the clock.
- SugarOne and a quarter pounds is about 2 3/4 cups for 3 cups of apple pulp — very sweet, and it will make the custard syrupy. Half that is closer to modern taste, especially with sweeter apples than the hard tart varieties the recipe assumes.
- MeasuresA pint here is 16 fl oz, so a pint and a half of strained apple is 3 cups; a quart of milk is 4 cups. A dozen apples will give more pulp than that, so measure out the pint and a half the recipe calls for.
- "Strained apple"Mashing with a spoon leaves the sauce coarse. Pushing it through a sieve, as the word "strained" implies, is what gives the finished custard its smooth body — a blender does the same job faster.
- Cool before adding eggsThe instruction to leave the sweetened apple until cold is not optional. Warm pulp will scramble the eggs before the dish reaches the oven.
- MilkWhole milk gives a firmer set than skimmed or reduced-fat milk. A cup of the quart replaced with cream makes a noticeably richer custard.
- YieldAbout two quarts of mixture — sixteen or so half-cup custards. Chill thoroughly, as the recipe says it is to be eaten cold.
The Home Cook Book (Chicago, 1876) was compiled from contributions by named local women, which is why this one carries Mrs. F. B. Orr's name at the head. Apple custard belongs to a large family of nineteenth-century "fruit custards" that stretched eggs and milk with whatever the cellar held; apples kept from autumn into spring in barrels and were the default fruit for months at a stretch. The heavy hand with sugar reflects both the sharpness of many period cooking apples and the fact that refined sugar had become cheaper by the 1870s. Serving it cold in individual cups, rather than as a pie, marks it as a dessert of the kind that could be made in the morning and left to stand.