Fruit Pudding

Pouding aux fruits (layered fruit custard pudding) teaches one hard, useful lesson: a layer must support the next before you ask it to carry fruit. The finished pudding is tender rather than stiff, with apricot slices suspended through pale gold custard and the same fruit made into a bright sauce.

The grand formula assumed a pastry cook tending repeated settings, a generous mould, and enough hands to keep the fruit sauce ready. It needed neither the saucier, stockpot, nor salamander that supported so many dishes in the canon; its real demand was attention. Here the book's seven whole eggs and seven yolks per quart of milk become three of each with three-sevenths of a quart, 405 ml, for a 1.25-litre mould. A blender replaces the old pounding, while a small sieve gives the purée its proper finish. The brigade setup can go. The bain-marie (hot-water bath) and the sequential setting stay, because those are the dish.

Pour each new coat over the back of a spoon and test the layer with one slice first. If it sinks, lift it out and give the custard a few more minutes; ça se rattrape. That pause is the one step that matters most.