Huguenot Torte

This torte is easy to assemble, goes on a transformative journey as it cooks and pleases everyone who tastes it.

The silky batter, which blends apples, pecans and vanilla, billows in the oven, then just when it seems as if it might spill over the sides of its pan, it begins retracting until it sinks down into itself like a crater. The brown crust is like the ideal macaroon, and the center has the gooey, custardlike texture of a proper pecan pie.

The torte’s dense, meringuey look probably contributes to the misconception that it was brought over from France by the Huguenots, or French Protestants, who fled to South Carolina in the 17th century for religious freedom. John Martin Taylor, a cookbook author and culinary historian, points out that the use of baking powder for leavening is the first indication that the dish is not French. Instead, this torte descends from a more recent dessert called Ozark pudding, an Arkasas/Missouri regional specialty that has gone the way of cooter pie and rice bread.

Huguenot torte, Taylor said, first showed up in print in 1950 in “Charleston Receipts,” a successful community cookbook in which the torte recipe was attributed to Evelyn Anderson Florance. In the 1980s, Taylor tracked her down in a nursing home and discovered that she had eaten Ozark pudding on a trip to Galveston, Tex., in the 1930s. After fiddling with the recipe, she renamed it Huguenot Torte after Huguenot Tavern, a Charleston restaurant where she made desserts in the 1940s. The tavern, one of the last places in Old Charleston where you could eat Lowcountry food, became known for the torte.

This recipe, published by Craig Claiborne in the NY Times in 1965, came from “The First Ladies Cook Book,” where it is featured in the chapter on Martin Van Buren — a historical impossibility because the dessert was created nearly 100 years after his term. The original recipe said that the torte could be served warm or chilled, although the torte has so much sticky sugar in it that when it’s cold you have to do battle to cut it.

RECIPE
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup peeled and chopped tart cooking apples
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

2. Beat the eggs and salt with a rotary beater until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the sugar.

3. Fold in the apples and pecans with a whisk. Add the vanilla, flour and baking powder. Pour into a well-greased baking pan about 8-by-12 or 9-by-9 inches and at least 2 inches deep. Bake for 45 minutes, until sunken and crusty.

Best served warm with whipped cream sweetened and flavored with almond extract. Serves 8.