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Bird's Nest
Mrs. F. M. Cragin.
Pare six or eight large apples (Spitzenbergs or Greenings are best), and remove the core by cutting from the end down into the middle, so as to leave the apple whole, except where the core has been removed; place them as near together as they can stand with the open part upward in a deep pie-dish; next make a thin batter, using one quart sweet milk, three eggs with sufficient flour, and pour it into the dish around the apples, also filling the cavities in them; bake them in a quick oven; eat them with butter and sugar.
A whole-apple batter pudding of the Yorkshire-pudding family, baked in one dish. The original gives no flour quantity and no baking time, so both need judgment.
- "Quick oven"Conventionally read as somewhere around 400-450F. A hot oven helps the batter set and rise around the fruit; a cooler one tends to give a heavier, more custardy layer.
- The batterOne quart of milk to three eggs is thin by modern standards. "Sufficient flour" for a pourable batter of this type works out at about 2 to 2¼ cups; aim for the consistency of heavy cream, not pancake batter.
- "Sweet milk"Simply fresh unsoured milk, as distinct from the buttermilk or clabbered milk also kept in a nineteenth-century kitchen. Whole milk is the right substitute.
- The applesSpitzenburg and Rhode Island Greening are both firm, tart heirlooms that hold their shape through a long bake. Braeburn, Northern Spy, Granny Smith or Winesap behave the same way; softer varieties collapse into the batter.
- CoringCut in from one end and stop short of the base, so each apple becomes a cup. Batter poured into the cavity sets there and gives the "nest" its filling.
- The dishA deep pie-dish means a deep-sided ceramic or glass baker, not a shallow pie plate. A quart of batter plus eight apples needs at least a 3-quart dish with headroom, since the batter rises.
- TimingNone is given. Expect 45 to 60 minutes at high heat: the batter should be puffed and browned and a skewer should pass through the apples with no resistance. Cover loosely with foil if the top colors before the fruit is done.
- Yield and servingSix to eight portions, one apple each. "Eat them with butter and sugar" most likely means butter and sugar added at the table while the pudding is hot; brown sugar or a hard sauce would also suit.
Bird's nest pudding is an old New England name for whole apples baked in something that surrounds them - sometimes custard, sometimes, as here, a plain egg-and-milk batter of the same construction as Yorkshire pudding. The name presumably refers to the finished look: each apple sitting in a hollow of set batter with its cored center filled. Versions appear across American community and household cookbooks through the nineteenth century, and Spitzenburg and Rhode Island Greening were both standard Northeastern keeping apples of the period, valued because they stayed firm in the cellar through winter and did not go to mush in the oven. Community cookbooks of this kind commonly collected contributions under the names of the women who supplied them, which is why this one carries Mrs. F. M. Cragin's.