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Orange Pudding (II)
Mrs. J. G. Hamilton.
Peel and cut five sweet oranges into thin slices, taking cut the seeds; pour over them a coffee cup of white sugar; let a pint of milk get boiling hot, by setting it in a pot of boiling water; and the yolks of three eggs well beaten, one tablespoon of corn starch, made smooth with a little cold milk; stir all the time; as soon as thickened, pour over the fruit. Beat the whites to a stiff froth, adding a tablespoon of sugar, and spread over the top for frosting; set it in the oven for a few minutes to harden; eat cold or hot (better cold), for dinner or supper. Berries or peaches can be substituted for oranges.
A stirred cornstarch custard poured hot over sugared orange slices and finished with meringue — the direct ancestor of the layered fruit-and-custard puddings that later became banana pudding. Two things decide whether it works: the custard must thicken without curdling, and the oranges must be free of pith and membrane.
- A coffee cup of sugarPeriod coffee cups ran smaller than a modern mug; read it as about one cup, and less if your oranges are very sweet. The sugar is there to draw juice from the fruit, so let the sliced oranges sit in it for fifteen minutes or so before the custard goes on.
- Sweet orangesThe wording distinguishes these from bitter (Seville) oranges, which were still known in the period, largely for marmalade. Any modern eating orange qualifies; navels are easiest. Cut away all white pith and, if you have the patience, the membrane between segments, which turns leathery under hot custard.
- The double boiler"setting it in a pot of boiling water" is what makes this forgiving. Over direct heat a yolk custard can catch and curdle; over water it thickens gently. Temper the beaten yolks with a ladle of the hot milk before they go into the pan.
- How thick is thickenedA pint of milk with one tablespoon of cornstarch and three yolks gives a pouring custard, not a set pudding; it firms as it cools. Bring it up until the starch has thickened and it coats a spoon and holds a line drawn through it, then stop -- prolonged hard boiling can thin the starch again.
- Oven for the meringueThree whites and a tablespoon of sugar is a very lightly sweetened soft meringue. The recipe only says a few minutes in the oven to harden: brown it in a hot oven, watching it closely, or briefly under a broiler. It will weep if it sits long, so serve it the day it is made.
- Berries or peachesThe substitution works, but wetter fruit dilutes the custard. Peaches should be peeled and sliced; strawberries halved. Sugar them separately and drain off the excess juice before the custard goes over.
- Yield and servingEnough for four to six in a shallow dish or a deep pie plate. The recipe is right that cold is better — the starch custard sets and the orange juice runs down into it.
The Home Cook Book (Chicago, 1874) was one of the earliest and most successful American charity compilations, its receipts contributed by named local women and sold to benefit a Chicago charitable home; the format was copied across the country for decades afterward, which is why so many nineteenth-century books credit dishes to a Mrs. So-and-so. This pudding belongs to a large family of stirred custards poured over fruit and capped with meringue, generally traced back to English orange and lemon puddings and, in America, made easier by commercial cornstarch, which became increasingly available for domestic use from the middle of the century and let cooks thicken a custard with fewer eggs. Oranges shipped north from Florida and the Mediterranean were still enough of an occasion in a Midwestern winter to justify a pudding built entirely around them — and the closing note that berries or peaches can be substituted tells you what was on hand the rest of the year.