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Bachelor's Pudding
Three eggs, well beaten, (the white of one beaten separately until firm enough to cut with a knife), two teacupfuls of milk, one teacupful of sugar, one soda cracker broken in six pieces, a slice of peeled orange laid on each piece and sprinkled with sugar; put them in the dish and they will float; bake in a very hot oven, and, when half done, put a spoonful of the white of beaten egg on each piece; return to the oven and bake five minutes, and you have a splendid dish.
This is a baked orange custard with a cracker for body and a scant meringue on top. The published oven instruction is the one thing worth ignoring.
- TeacupfulA teacup in this period is smaller than a modern measuring cup; equivalences given in period sources range from about 1/2 to 3/4 cup. Taken at 3/4 cup, that is roughly 1 1/2 cups milk and 3/4 cup sugar, which is sweet by current taste; 1/2 cup sugar is plenty.
- How the eggs divideThree eggs total: two whole eggs plus one yolk go into the custard, and the single reserved white is whipped for the topping. "Firm enough to cut with a knife" means stiff peaks.
- "A very hot oven" is wrong hereA very hot oven meant 450F or above, and an egg-and-milk custard set at that heat will curdle and weep. Bake at 325-350F, ideally in a pan of hot water, until the centre is just barely trembling — about 40-50 minutes.
- DonenessThe custard is set at 170-175F at the centre; a knife inserted halfway between edge and middle should come out clean. Carryover heat finishes it, so pull it slightly short.
- Soda crackerA plain unsalted or lightly salted cracker of the saltine type. Broken in six, it softens into the custard and gives the pudding a little structure without any pastry.
- The meringueOne egg white beaten stiff makes very little topping — a spoonful per piece is literal, not generous. Whip in a tablespoon of sugar for stability, and give it 5-8 minutes to colour rather than the stated five if it is still pale.
- The orangePeel and pith removed, cut in rounds or supremes. Bitter pith is the main risk of an unpleasant result.
- YieldSix pieces, so six small servings. Bake in a single shallow dish rather than ramekins so the cracker pieces can float as described.
Recipes titled "bachelor's" appear in nineteenth-century American and British household books, and the name is usually read as shorthand for thrift and improvisation rather than any connection to a particular cook: a dish assembled from what a man living alone might plausibly have on a shelf. The soda cracker points to a later date: factory-baked crackers were cheap and widely available in American groceries by the 1890s, and cookbooks of the period use them in place of the breadcrumbs, stale cake or pastry crust that earlier puddings required. The orange marks it as a modest luxury: by around 1900 Florida and California fruit was reaching northern cities by rail in winter, so a sliced orange in a pudding was less of an extravagance than it had been a generation earlier.