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Cabinet Pudding
8 stale lady fingers, 12 macaroons, 3 tablespoons cherries, currants, and citron peel chopped fine, 1 tablespoon sugar, 3 eggs, 1 pint milk, 2 teaspoons Crisco, and vanilla extract.
Decorate bottom of mold with some fruit, lay row macaroons round edge of bottom. Cut ladyfingers into pieces, mix with fruit and loosely fill mold. Beat eggs with little cold milk, and 2 teaspoons Crisco, scald remainder of milk, and pour on to eggs, beating at the same time. Sweeten and flavor to taste. Gently pour this into mold. Cover with Criscoed paper and place in steamer to cook until set. This will take 3/4 of an hour. Let pudding stand 1 minute or 2 before turning out. Serve with custard sauce. Croutes, a la Rosamonde Take some small round tomatoes, and cut in slices 1/4 inch thick. Lay in dish and sprinkle with melted Crisco, vinegar, pepper and salt. Then make some round croutes of short paste little larger than tomato; place 1 slice tomato on each, 1 rolled fillet anchovy on top, and garnish with 1 hard-cooked egg yolk and small piece white endive.
A steamed bread-and-butter pudding in disguise: crisp bakery biscuits soaked in custard and turned out of a mold. Note that the page runs a second, unrelated savory recipe (Croutes a la Rosamonde) on to the end of the first — they are not connected.
- The hinge: gentle, even heatThis is a custard, and steam is used because it never exceeds boiling. Keep the water at a bare simmer; a hard boil will curdle the eggs and leave the pudding weeping when you unmold it. It is set when a knife near the center comes out clean, around 170-175F.
- MeasurementsA pint is 2 cups of milk. Three eggs to 2 cups is a soft custard ratio, correct for something meant to be turned out but not sliced thin. Use a 1-quart mold or pudding basin.
- CriscoThis book was published by the makers of Crisco, which is why shortening turns up in a custard where butter belongs. Two teaspoons of butter will do the same job and taste better; "Criscoed paper" simply means greased parchment or foil, tied or crimped over the top to keep condensation out.
- MacaroonsNot the coconut kind and not French macarons. These are crisp almond biscuits — amaretti or Italian-style almond macaroons — which hold their shape against the custard. Soft coconut macaroons will dissolve into paste.
- Citron peelCandied citron, still sold around the winter holidays and in Italian groceries. Candied orange or mixed peel substitutes without complaint. The "cherries" are candied glacé cherries, not fresh.
- SweeteningOne tablespoon of sugar is a starting point only; the recipe then says to sweeten to taste. The macaroons and candied fruit carry most of the sugar, so 2-3 tablespoons in the custard is usually enough.
- UnmoldingThe one- or two-minute rest matters — long enough for the custard to firm at the edges, short enough that it has not begun to stick. Run a thin knife around the rim, invert onto a warm plate, and lift the mold straight up.
- YieldServes 4 to 6. Custard sauce, the standard accompaniment, is a thin pouring custard (crème anglaise), not a thick pastry cream.
- The second recipeFor the croutes: "short paste" is shortcrust, cut in rounds slightly wider than a tomato slice and baked blind until crisp. Assemble just before serving or the pastry softens under the dressed tomato.
Cabinet pudding was a fixture of nineteenth-century English cookery, appearing under a run of grand-sounding aliases — Chancellor's pudding, Newcastle pudding, diplomat pudding — that seem to have been attached for the sound of them rather than any traceable connection to a cabinet minister. The method is thrift dressed up: stale sponge fingers and hard biscuits, which would otherwise be thrown out, are set in custard with candied fruit and steamed in a decorated mold so that the pattern of cherries and peel becomes the top when turned out. A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and issued by the makers of Crisco in the 1910s, which is why a shortening only a few years old at the time has been worked into a Victorian custard that would ordinarily have taken butter.