For my next dish from Miss Lloyds book of receipts I choose Baked Apple Pudding recipe. I truly believe that to fully understand what constitutes a pudding in England you would need lock in a room a dozen historians, half a dozen therapists, a bottle or four of Glenfiddich and a few episodes of Little Britain for comic relief. That is a topic for maybe another day. So without further ado lets tackle today’s recipe.

Baked Apple Pudding recipe from A Jane Austen Household Book with Martha Lloyd’s Recipes by Peggy Hickman (1978) — Baked Apple Pudding recipe from *A Jane Austen Household Book with Martha Lloyd’s Recipes* by Peggy Hickman (1978)

To try to learn as much as I could about the pudding before I even walked into the kitchen, I began with examining the recipe itself and comparing with other contemporary receipts.

Let’s start with the ingredients. Pippins are crisp and tart apples that most commonly are used in cooking and cider making. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any in my area so I opted for a combination of granny smith and pink lady apples for the first tart and just pink ladies for the second. Thankfully the rest of the ingredients (eggs, butter, lemon) were something I always have on had so no trouble there. Sometimes other recipes mention cinnamon, nutmeg, sack or rose water for flavouring and dried fruits (such as raisins or currants) to be added in the filling. More interestingly spinach juice has been suggested to colour the tart green. On few occasions I have also seen Naples biscuits being crushed and added as a thickener.

Apple Pudding from The Cook and Housekeepers Complete and Universal Dictionary by Mrs. Mary Eaton (1823) — Apple Pudding from *The Cook and Housekeepers Complete and Universal Dictionary* by Mrs. Mary Eaton (1823)

Apple Pudding from American Cookery by Amelia Simmons (1796). Here the author suggest different add-ins to the pudding. — Apple Pudding from *American Cookery* by Amelia Simmons (1796). Here the author suggest different add-ins to the pudding.

Next up the techniques. “pulp them through your cullender” was not a phrase I was familiar. However my guess is that you are to puree the apples. Other contemporary recipes tell you to “sieve the apple” instead which I think means to same thing. Most apple pudding recipes instruct to stew the apples with little bit of water until soft or roast in the over - essentially making an apple sauce. However there were a few that instructed you grate the apples. Because Ms Lloyd didn’t specify the method she used, I chose stew the apples in a saucepan because it seemed the least fussy option. Everything else in the recipe is self-explanatory.

Lastly, the elephant in the room - the pastry. The recipe calls for puff pastry as a base. The problem lies in the fact that filling is essentially a custard and if you want a nice crisp puff pastry on the bottom for your pies, tarts or in this case a pudding then your filling should be as dry as you can get it. Unfortunately I don’t know any trick what would prevent the blasphemous soggy bottom with this kind of filling so I diverted from the original recipe and used shortcrust pastry.

Shrewsbury Paste from The English Art of Cookery by Richard Briggs (1788).jpg. It is very similar recipe to what you might in modern cooking books. It uses both sugar and eggs in it, which is quite unusual to the recipes you normal find in the cook… — Shrewsbury Paste from *The English Art of Cookery* by Richard Briggs (1788).jpg. It is very similar recipe to what you might in modern cooking books. It uses both sugar and eggs in it, which is quite unusual to the recipes you normal find in the cookbooks of that time.

There are number of shortcrust recipes in the 18th century cookbooks, however most of them use only butter, flour and cold water. Very few add any sugar and even fewer eggs in it. Knowing that I would be sharing the pudding with my boyfriend I decided to honour his sensibilities and use a modern shortcrust pastry recipe that I know well - Michel Roux Pâte à Foncer. Since I wasn’t sticking to the period pastry I decided to blind bake it as well, something that I haven’t read as being done in the period.

The result was a very nice pudding. The texture was something halfway to a custard and a curd and the flavours were very subtle flavours. If I would be making it again, I would probably try to concentrate the apple flavour a bit more and add cinnamon, something that felt counter-intuitive to begin with. One note of the filling is that I could have easily doubled it, because it only reached half way point in the pastry case. My pie dish was on the larger side, so next time I would probably choose a smaller dish or double the filling. (The photograph for the end result is the title picture.)

Martha Lloyd’s Baked apple pudding

for the pastry
250 grams flour
25 grams of caster sugar
pinch of salt, if the butter is unsalted
125 grams butter, cut into smaller pieces and slightly softened
1 medium egg, beaten
40 ml cold water, or as needed

for the filling
4 apples, peeled, cored and cut into smaller pieces (530 grams net)
4 tbsp caster sugar
juice of one small lemon
55 grams of melted butter
3 eggs

pastry. Mix together flour, sugar and salt, if using, then rub in the butter. Add in the egg and lastly water until the dough just comes together. Kneed 3 or 4 times and place it in the refrigerator for minimum 30 minutes to relax. Preheat the oven to 170°C (fan). Roll the pastry out and put in a pie dish, prick it with a fork, lay in piece of baking paper and add baking weights (or dried beans). Blind bake the pastry for 15 minutes, then lower the temperature to 150°C (fan), take the parchment and weights off and bake it for another 5 minutes. Set aside to cool down.

filling. Add the apples to a pan with little bit of water (100 ml) and cook it on medium heat until the apples have turned into mush and become slightly darker. Add more water when the apples start to get dry. Once soft pass them through a sieve and set aside to cool down. I yielded ~450 grams of apple sauce. Once the apples are at room temperature mix then with the rest of the filling ingredients.

Pour the filling in the pastry case and bake at 150°C (fan) for 40 minutes. Let it cool down completely before slicing. Serve with icing sugar.

Apple Pudding from The English Art of Cookery by Richard Briggs (1788) — Apple Pudding from *The English Art of Cookery* by Richard Briggs (1788)

Because I can’t help myself I decided to make another apple pudding recipe. I choose a recipe from The English Art of Cookery by Richard Briggs for the sole reason that it had sack in it. As with the previous recipe I blundered up the filling amount and it only filled halfway up. That being said it was still a tasty apple pudding. I didn’t serve it hot as the author suggests, instead I allowed it cool down a little (letting the filling set just a little bit) before doing so. My boyfriend said that he preferred the second pudding better than the first, because it had more flavour, it wasn’t as subtle. The next day I served it cold with whipped cream which I think I preferred. If I were to make it again, I think I would make it as individual tarts.

Richard Briggs Apple Pudding

for the pastry
see Martha Lloyds recipe above

for the filling
225 grams of stewed apples pushed through a sieve (see Martha Lloyds recipe) or ready made apple sauce
110 grams of caster sugar
pinch of nutmeg
4 egg yolks
50 ml sherry

pastry. repeat the steps from Martha Lloyds recipe

filling. mix all of the ingredients together, pour the filling in the pastry case and bake at 150°C (fan) for 40 minutes. Serve with icing sugar dusted over.

Disclaimer! I live in a small city apartment and cook on an electric stove-top and oven. The recipes have been recreated with modern appliances and ingredients from my local grocery shop as that is what was available to me at the time of writing. I only recently have started to cook from old cookbooks and still have much to learn so it is very much possible that I have misinterpreted a recipe and the fault is mine and not the recipes.

Notes

If you are more of a visual person I have included a couple of videos on the topic for you to enjoy. A quick note - some of them are referencing a Marlborough Pudding or Marlborough Pie. It is in all but name a baked apple pudding.
1. Two apple pudding recipe videos titled Too Much Butter?? - A Recipe From 1794 and Baked Applesauce Pudding? - An Historic German Recipe are also available on Townsend YouTube channel. In the video the presenter John Townsend cook two very different apple puddings with interesting results.
2. Marlborough Pudding by Old Sturbridge Village. Old Sturbridge Village is an open air museum in America that allows you to explore a rural New England town of the 1830s. Here they show you how to make Marlborough Pudding in their historic kitchen.
3. Lastly on the YouTube channel Glen and Friends Cooking you can find two more Marlborough pudding recipes titled Marlboro Apple Pie Recipe #Fail and Marlborough Pudding Recipe - The Cook Not Mad Cookbook - The Old Cookbook Show with various success from 1855 and 1831 respectively.

Sources

Hickman, Peggy, A Jane Austen Household Book with Martha Lloyd’s Recipes, Readers Union, Group of Book Clubs, 1978
Briggs, Richard, The English Art of Cookery , 1788
Eaton, Mary, The Cook and Housekeepers Complete and Universal Dictionary, 1823
Simmons, Amelia, American Cookery, 1796