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Souffla Pudding
One quart milk, one pint bread crumbs, one cupful sugar, the grated rind of one lemon, piece of butter size of an egg, yolks of four eggs; soak the crumbs in the milk, mix altogether until it thickens. When done spread a layer of jelly over the top and beat the whites of the eggs very light, add half a cup of sugar and the juice of the lemon. Heap it like rocks over the jelly and put it in the oven to brown.
This is a queen of puddings under a French-sounding name: a baked custard thickened with bread, spread with jam, and finished under a meringue. The original assumes you know that the base is baked, not stirred on the stove.
- The hinge: the base is bakedThe base: "Mix altogether until it thickens" is ambiguous -- it may mean thickening over heat or setting in the oven, and the only oven direction in the recipe is for browning the meringue. Baked in a buttered dish at 325-350F for 40-50 minutes, until the centre is just firm and a knife comes out clean, is the usual reading; if thickened over direct heat instead, it must be kept gentle and stirred or the yolks will curdle.
- MeasurementsOne quart milk is 4 cups; one pint of bread crumbs is 2 cups by volume, which is roughly 3-4 oz of soft crumbs from a day-old loaf. Butter "size of an egg" is about 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons.
- Bread crumbsSoft crumbs torn from stale white bread, not dried packaged crumbs, which are far denser by volume and will make the pudding heavy. Let them soak in the milk 15-20 minutes before adding the eggs and sugar.
- Oven for the meringueAfter the jelly and meringue go on, return it to a moderate oven, 350F, for 12-15 minutes until the peaks are tinged brown. A hotter oven browns the tips before the meringue sets and weeps.
- The jelly layerSpread it while the pudding is still warm so it softens and stays put; a stiff cold jelly tears the surface. Red currant, raspberry or apricot are the traditional choices, and about half a cup covers a two-quart dish.
- Lemon juice in the meringueThe acid helps stabilise the whites; adding it a little at a time once the whites are stiff, and beating the sugar in gradually, avoids slackening the foam, though acid added earlier in the beating is also common practice.
- "Heap it like rocks"Drop the meringue in rough spoonfuls rather than smoothing it flat; the peaks are the point of the dish and they colour unevenly, which is the intended effect.
- Yield and servingFills a two-quart baking dish and serves six to eight. Best served warm, within an hour or so of baking, since the meringue softens and beads as it stands.
Bread-and-milk puddings gilded with jam and meringue were a staple of English and American household cookery through the nineteenth century, appearing under a variety of names, among them "queen of puddings" or "queen's pudding"; the ingredients here are close to that formula. Calling it a souffl— the book's own spelling has slipped to "Souffla" — seems to reflect what was arguably a period tendency to borrow French names for anything lightened with beaten whites, whether or not the dish rose in the oven. The recipe also shows the thrift underneath the elegance: a quart of milk, stale bread and four eggs turned into a company dessert, with the yolks going into the custard and the whites into the topping so that nothing is left over.