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Delicate Pudding
Take one quart of milk, and while boiling stir in one pint of sifted flour, six eggs, six tablespoonfuls of white sugar, one spoonful of butter, the grated peel and juice of two lemons. All the ingredients must be well beaten together before they are stirred into the milk. Stir one way without stopping for a minute or two, take it off, and turn into your pudding-dish. It is to be eaten cold, with sugar and cream if you like.
This is a stirred flour-and-egg pudding of the blancmange family, thickened on the stovetop rather than baked, then chilled and served from the dish. Two things in the original need adjusting: the lemon juice and the cooking time.
- Add the lemon juice lastAcid poured into hot milk will curdle it, and two lemons' worth is a great deal of acid. Beat the zest into the eggs and sugar, but stir the juice in off the heat once the pudding has thickened.
- Temper the eggsSix eggs whisked cold into a quart of boiling milk will scramble at the edges before the flour has a chance to set. Whisk a ladleful of hot milk into the egg-flour mixture first, then return it all to the pan over medium heat.
- A pint of sifted flourFlour was measured by volume then: two cups sifted, roughly 8 oz by weight. Weighing it is safer than scooping, since packed flour will give you paste rather than pudding.
- One spoonful of butterAn unqualified "spoonful" in books of this period usually means a tablespoon; about 1/2 oz. It is there for gloss, not structure, so the exact amount is not critical.
- Cook longer than a minute or twoRaw flour tastes of raw flour. Once the mixture thickens, keep it at a bare simmer for 5 to 8 minutes, stirring constantly, until it loses the pasty flavour and holds a clean line when the spoon is drawn across the bottom.
- "Stir one way"Stirring in a single direction is kitchen folklore rather than chemistry, but constant motion is not: flour and egg will scorch on the pan bottom within seconds if you stop. Use a flat-ended wooden spatula or a whisk and keep the heat moderate.
- Chilling and unmouldingTurn it into a rinsed mould or a straight-sided dish and press cling film onto the surface to stop a skin forming. It needs at least four hours cold to set firmly enough to slice.
- YieldA quart of milk plus flour and six eggs makes a substantial pudding, enough for eight to ten servings. Cream and a little sugar at the table, as directed, is still the right accompaniment.
Puddings like this sit at the point where the old boiled flour pottage meets the French pastry cream: milk thickened with flour and eggs, sharpened with lemon, set cold and eaten with cream. Names such as "Delicate Pudding" appear in nineteenth and early twentieth century American household books and seem to have signalled texture rather than any fixed formula, in the same family as "delicate cake" — pale, fine-crumbed, made with white sugar and no spice. The instruction to stir one way without stopping recurs in recipe writing of the period, repeated from book to book long after anyone could say why.