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Apple Pudding (II)
Mrs. W. Guthrie.
Five eggs, one pint milk, four tablespoons flour, four apples grated; bake one hour and a quarter. Serve with sweetened cream or pudding sauce.
This is a baked batter pudding in the older English style — closer to a thick clafoutis or a sweet Yorkshire pudding than to anything layered with bread or crumbs. The original assumes you know how a pudding batter behaves, so the gaps are worth filling in.
- The hinge: grate the apples lastGrated apple browns and weeps within minutes. Have the batter mixed and the dish buttered before you touch the apples, then fold them in and get the pudding into the oven immediately.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given in the original. A pudding of this type is usually baked in a moderate oven, about 350F, for the stated hour and a quarter; the figure is a modern inference, not the book's. Much hotter and the eggs may curdle at the edges before the centre sets.
- Vessel and depthUse a buttered 8-inch square or 2-quart baking dish. The batter is thin, and in anything deeper it will not set through in the time given; in anything much wider it will overbake into a pancake.
- Proportions in modern termsFive eggs, one pint milk (2 cups by US measure; if the book's pint is imperial, 2 1/2 cups), 4 tablespoons all-purpose flour. That is a very loose custard batter by design — it should pour, not drop.
- No sugar in the puddingNone is listed; the sweetening comes from the cream or sauce poured over at table. If you want the pudding itself sweet, about 1/3 cup sugar beaten with the eggs should not upset the set.
- The applesApples in 1877 were on average likely smaller than modern commercial fruit; aim for about 1 lb peeled and cored. A firm tart variety holds its shape; softer eating apples dissolve into the custard.
- Judging it doneThe centre should be puffed and just set, with no liquid wobble — around 175-180F if you check. It will sink somewhat as it cools, which is normal for a batter pudding.
- Serving and yieldSix modest servings, best warm rather than hot. "Sweetened cream" means pouring cream stirred with a spoonful of sugar, not whipped; a hard sauce or a thin lemon pudding sauce also suits it.
The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) was one of North America's earliest compiled charity cookbooks, credited to ladies of Toronto and the chief cities and towns of Canada, with each contribution signed — hence Mrs. W. Guthrie's name standing over four lines of instruction and nothing else. That brevity is the form's signature: contributors were writing for peers who already knew what a batter pudding looked like coming out of the oven. Baked batter puddings of eggs, milk and a little flour descend from the English school of boiled and baked puddings that predate the widespread use of chemical leaveners, and adding grated raw apple would have been one plausible way to stretch and flavour one in autumn. The section heading, "Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen," sits among the assorted humorous filler the book carries — a reminder that these volumes were read for entertainment as much as reference.