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Apple Custards
Mrs. C. M. Dickerman.
Take six tart apples, pare and quarter them, put into a baking dish with one cup water; cook until tender, but not to pieces, then turn them into a pudding dish and sprinkle sugar over to cover them; beat eight eggs with sugar; and mix with them three pints of milk, a little nutmeg; turn it over the apples, and bake twentyfive minutes.
A straightforward baked egg custard poured over stewed apple quarters. The original gives no oven temperature and no sugar quantities, and the stated baking time is far too short for the volume of custard involved.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Bake at 325F; a baked custard set above about 350F will curdle and weep. If your oven runs hot, err lower rather than shorter.
- The real baking timeThree pints of milk and eight eggs is roughly two quarts of custard. Twenty-five minutes will not set it. Expect 50 to 75 minutes in a water bath, and judge by the custard rather than the clock.
- Water bathSet the pudding dish in a larger pan and pour in boiling water to come halfway up the sides. This is the hinge of the recipe: without it the outside sets to rubber while the centre stays liquid.
- Testing for doneThe custard is ready when a knife inserted an inch from the edge comes out clean and the centre still wobbles as a single mass. An instant-read thermometer should show 170-175F. It firms further as it cools.
- Sugar quantitiesTwo unmeasured additions. Figure 2 to 3 tablespoons sprinkled over the apples, depending on how tart they are, and about 3/4 cup beaten into the eggs for two quarts of custard.
- The apples"Tart" means a firm cooking apple - Bramley, Granny Smith, Northern Spy. Cook the quarters until a knife just enters, 10 to 15 minutes, and drain off the cooking water before layering them, or it will thin the custard.
- Dish and yieldYou need a large deep baking dish, at least 3 quarts and probably nearer 4 once the apples are in, not a pie plate. This serves 10 to 12.
- Nutmeg"A little" means about a quarter teaspoon, freshly grated, beaten into the custard.
Baked custard over fruit is a long-established form of English pudding, and by the time The Home Cook Book appeared in the 1870s custards of this kind were common in North American household cookery - cheap, filling, and made from what a family with a cow and a barrel of apples in the cellar already had. The book is a compilation of contributed recipes, printed with quantities left vague and the oven left to the cook's judgement, since a wood range gave no numbers to quote. The generous egg count reflects a period when eggs came from the yard rather than the store.