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Orange Pudding
Mrs. Carson.
Peel and cut five good oranges into thin slices, taking out all seeds; put over them a coffee cup of fine white sugar. Let a pint of milk get boiling hot. by setting in hot water; add the yolks of three eggs well beaten, one tablespoon of corn starch made smooth in a little cold milk; stir all the time, and as soon as thickened pour it over the fruit. Beat the whites to a stiff froth, add a tablespoon of sugar, and spread it over the top for frosting; set in oven a minute to harden. Can be eaten hot, but is best cold.
A layered orange custard of the sort that appears in nearly every American community cookbook of the 1870s and 80s. The method is sound; only the measures and the meringue need translating.
- A coffee cup of sugarIn this period a coffee cup is reckoned at about a cup, though kitchen cups ran smaller than the modern 8 oz measure. Start with three-quarters of a cup for five oranges and add more only if the fruit is sharp.
- Setting in hot waterThis is a double boiler instruction. With three yolks and only a tablespoon of cornstarch, direct heat risks curdling the custard before it thickens.
- Cornstarch consistencyOne tablespoon into a pint of milk gives a pouring custard that sets soft as it chills, not a sliceable pudding. If you want it firmer, go to two tablespoons and expect a texture closer to blancmange.
- Preparing the orangesThin slices with the seeds picked out still leave the white pith and membrane, which turn bitter and chewy under hot custard. Cutting the segments free of their membranes gives a much better result.
- "Set in oven a minute to harden"The brief time implies a hot oven, or a few seconds under a broiler with the door watched. The aim is colour on the peaks, not a cooked-through meringue.
- The meringue and raw whitesA minute in the oven does not bring the whites to a temperature that pasteurises them. If you are serving anyone who should avoid undercooked egg, use pasteurised whites or bake the assembled dish at 350F until the meringue is set through, about 12 to 15 minutes.
- ServingEnough for six in small dishes. The book is right that it is better cold, but chill it no more than a few hours: meringue weeps once it sits on a wet custard overnight.
Orange pudding belongs to a family of Victorian desserts -- a cooked yolk custard poured over a fruit or crumb base, with the leftover whites beaten with sugar and browned on top -- that includes queen of puddings and, later, American banana pudding. Using up three egg whites was thrifty as much as decorative. Its appearance in a subscription cookbook, credited to a named contributor, is typical of the genre; oranges were becoming more widely available in the American interior as rail freight and the Florida and California groves developed, though in this period they were still something of a treat. Cornstarch was itself a relatively recent commercial convenience, manufactured in quantity in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century and promoted in exactly these pudding recipes.