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Pudding, Menagere
Peel, core and mince three medium, sound apples. Place in a vessel with three ounces bread crumbs, three ounces sugar, two ounces well-picked currants, one ounce chopped candied lemon peel, two tablespoons brandy and half teaspoon ground cinnamon. Mix all well. Crack in three fresh eggs, pour in two gills milk and one gill cream; mix well with the wooden spoon for five minutes. Lightly butter and sugar a quart pudding mould, pour in the preparation, lay it in a saucepan with hot water up to half the height of the mould. Set in the oven to bake for forty minutes. Remove, unmould on a hot dish, pour a coffee sauce over and serve.
A baked apple custard set in a water bath, closer to a bread-and-butter pudding than to a steamed suet pudding. The measurements are straightforward once the gills are converted.
- GillsTwo gills of milk is one cup; one gill of cream is half a cup (on the American reckoning of a gill as 4 fl oz; an imperial gill is 5 fl oz). Total liquid is about 1½ cups against three eggs, thickened further by the crumbs and apple. The water bath, as directed, keeps the outside of the custard from overheating.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives none, only 'set in the oven'. A modern equivalent would be 325–350F; the custard should reach 170–175F at the centre and a knife blade should come out clean. Forty minutes is plausible for a quart mould, but check at thirty-five.
- CurrantsThese are dried Zante currants, the small black raisins, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Plump them in warm water or a little of the brandy if they are hard, and drain before mixing.
- Candied lemon peelAn ounce is roughly two tablespoons chopped. Supermarket mixed peel is usually drier and sweeter than the old candied caps; good citron or homemade peel is noticeably better here.
- Bread crumbsThree ounces of soft crumbs from a day-old white loaf, not dried packaged crumbs, which absorb far more liquid and will make the pudding stodgy.
- Buttering and sugaring the mouldThis is the hinge for unmoulding: butter thoroughly, then coat with granulated sugar, which gives a non-stick layer. The recipe says to unmould at once onto a hot dish, but a few minutes' standing makes turning out easier.
- The water bathUse boiling water so the oven does not have to reheat it, and keep it at half the height of the mould. Water reaching higher risks seeping in; too little and the custard curdles at the edges.
- Coffee sauceNot given here — a thin custard sauce (egg yolks, sugar, milk) flavoured with strong coffee, served warm. A coffee-flavoured crème anglaise from any current source will do.
- YieldA quart mould serves four to six. Best warm; it firms considerably as it cools.
Ménagère is French kitchen shorthand for "housewife's" or plain household style — the label attached to dishes built from what a domestic larder held rather than from restaurant stores. Here that means apples, stale bread, currants, peel and a little brandy, bound with eggs and baked in a bain-marie, which is essentially the economical French cousin of an English bread pudding. The ingredients are ordinary, and the technique of setting a mould in hot water was already familiar from custards and charlottes.