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Hedgehog
16 cooking apples. 1/2 lb. lump sugar. 1 pint (2 cups) water 1/2 lemon 3 whites of eggs 3 tablespoonfuls granulated sugar 12 almonds Peel and core six of the apples without dividing, then cook them in a shallow pan with the water and lump sugar, and when tender lift them carefully on to a dish. Have ready the remainder of the apples, peeled, cored and sliced, put them into the same syrup with the grated rind of the lemon and cook gently till reduced to a pulp; stirring often to prevent burning. Cover the bottom of a dish with some of this apple marmalade, then add a layer of the whole apples, filling up the cavities with the marmalade, then another layer of the marmalade and so on, forming the whole in a raised oval shape. Beat up the whites of eggs to a stiff froth, beat the sugar into them, and cover the apples with this meringue.
Blanch and cut the almonds into four or five strips, stick these strips in upright at equal distances like the spines of a hedgehog, and place the dish in a slow oven for a few minutes before serving.
The ingredient list has come down to us incomplete — the apples and the lump sugar are named in the method but never quantified — so a little reconstruction is needed before you start.
- How many applesSix are baked whole and "the remainder" become marmalade; the recipe never says how many in all. Six more for the pulp is a reasonable reading, i.e. twelve apples, but the number is conjecture.
- The missing sugarThe lump sugar for the poaching syrup is unmeasured. Half a cup of granulated sugar to the pint of water gives a light syrup that will not candy while the apples soften; the three tablespoons listed belong to the meringue.
- Two kinds of appleThe whole apples must hold their shape through poaching and through being stacked, so use Braeburn, Golden Delicious or Honeycrisp. The ones destined for pulp can be Bramley, McIntosh or any variety that collapses readily.
- Cooking the whole applesKeep the syrup at a bare simmer and turn them once or twice rather than stirring. Fifteen to twenty minutes, until a skewer meets no resistance at the core; they will slump if pushed further, and the point of the dish is the raised oval.
- The marmaladeThis is apple pulp cooked down to a spreadable paste, not preserve. Cook it until a spoon drawn through leaves a channel, or the layers will slide and the mound will not stand.
- Blanching the almondsCover shelled almonds with boiling water for a minute, then slip off the skins and cut lengthwise while still damp and pliable. Dry almonds split and crumble. Twelve almonds at four or five strips each gives fifty-odd spines.
- "A slow oven"Reckon on around 300F. A few minutes at that heat, as the recipe directs, will barely set the meringue and will not colour it; if you want it firmer and the egg white fully cooked through, allow considerably longer. Watch the almond strips, which scorch before the meringue browns.
- Yield and servingServes six to eight. Assemble and bake the same day and serve warm or at room temperature — the meringue weeps and the spines soften if it is refrigerated overnight.
Apple hedgehog was a standing fixture of nineteenth-century English dessert courses, and versions appear under that name in Eliza Acton and in Mrs Beeton: whole poached apples banked up with apple pulp, masked in meringue and bristled with blanched almond spikes. The conceit is older than the apple version "hedgehogs" of almond paste, and a medieval "urchin" of pig's offal moulded to shape and stuck with almonds, belong to a long tradition of dishes disguised as animals for the amusement of the table.