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Pudding-Apple and Lemon
Mrs. R. Beaty.
Four eggs, whites of three to be kept for the top; six apples stewed or grated fine, four ounces of butter, six ounces of white sugar, juice and rind of one lemon. It is nicer cold.
A contributed recipe in the terse style of subscription cookbooks: ingredients, an assumption that you know what to do with them, and one line of advice at the end. Here is what the original leaves unsaid.
- How the eggs divideFour whole eggs are called for, but three whites are reserved for the meringue. So the base takes four yolks plus one white; the three remaining whites are beaten with a little sugar and spread over the top near the end of baking.
- Weights to volumeFour ounces of butter is one stick (half a cup). Six ounces of white sugar is a generous three-quarters of a cup by modern measure — weigh it if you can.
- The applesSix apples stewed down or grated raw gives somewhere around two to three cups of pulp, depending on their size and how far you cook them. Stewed apples should be cooked dry and beaten smooth, not left watery, or the pudding will not set. A firm tart variety holds its flavour against the lemon.
- Rind means zestGrate only the coloured outer layer of the lemon; the white pith beneath turns the pudding bitter. Add it to the sugar and rub the two together to draw out the oil.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because none could be. Bake at 350F until the centre is just set, then return it briefly at the same heat to colour the meringue — around 45 minutes to an hour in total for a dish of this size.
- Pastry or noneBaked puddings of this type were sometimes poured into a dish lined with pastry, though this recipe says nothing either way. It works baked plain in a buttered dish set in a water bath.
- Serve it cold, as instructedThe closing line is the most useful sentence in the recipe. Warm, the butter and yolks read as heavy; chilled, the lemon sharpens and the texture firms into something closer to a curd.
- YieldNo yield is given; the quantities suggest a single deep dish, probably serving about six.
The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) is generally credited as the first Canadian fundraising cookbook, compiled from recipes contributed by ladies of Toronto and of other Canadian cities and towns, and sold in aid of the Hospital for Sick Children. That format explains the shape of this entry: Mrs. R. Beaty is contributing a household standby to neighbours who already know how a baked pudding behaves, so she gives proportions and skips procedure. The dish itself belongs to a large British family of baked puddings built on eggs, butter, sugar and a fruit or lemon base — the same arithmetic that produces lemon curd, Bakewell fillings and transparent pies. Apples were, one imagines, among the fruits a Canadian household could most readily keep into winter, and pairing them with lemon may well have been a way of making a cheap larder staple into something fit to bring to the table cold at the end of a meal.