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Acidulated Pudding
Take the thin rind of three lemons and two Seville oranges, with a quarter of a pound of sugar: place them in a bowl with a pint of boiling water, and let them remain about an hour and a half; then remove the rinds, and add the juice of the lemons. Put three or four slices of sponge-cake into a glass dish, and strain the liquid over them; let them soak till they have absorbed the syrup, then pour over them a good custard, and strew a little pink sugar over the top. Sufficient for four or five persons. Probable cost, 1s. 2d.
A cold sponge-cake pudding in the trifle family, built on a citrus-peel infusion rather than wine. The original assumes you know what "a good custard" is and leaves everything else to judgment.
- Pare the rind thinlyThe whole flavour comes from the oils in the coloured zest; white pith turns the infusion bitter over a ninety-minute steep. A vegetable peeler held almost flat takes the rind without the pith.
- Seville orangesBitter marmalade oranges, on sale in Britain only for a short midwinter season, usually January and February. Out of season, one workable substitute is the juice and zest of an ordinary orange sharpened with an extra lemon, though the result is sweeter and less aromatic than intended.
- QuantitiesA pint here is the imperial 20 fl oz, about 570 ml. A quarter pound of sugar is 115 g, roughly half a cup plus a little.
- Add the juice off the heatThe lemon juice goes in after the rinds are lifted, not into the boiling water, so the fresh acidity survives. Strain the syrup before it goes over the cake to catch pips and stray zest.
- "A good custard"The book leaves this undefined; a standard stirred egg custard is meant. Roughly 4 egg yolks and 1 oz sugar to a pint of milk, cooked over low heat until it coats the spoon, works. Let it cool before pouring, or it will slump the soaked cake.
- Curdling insuranceAcid and hot custard can split. Cool the custard before pouring it over the already-soaked base.
- Pink sugarColoured sanding sugar, tinted in the period with cochineal. Any coarse coloured sugar works, added just before serving so it does not dissolve into the custard.
- Sponge cakeUse a plain, dry, egg-foam sponge or trifle sponges rather than a moist buttery cake, which goes to paste under a pint of syrup. Stale is better than fresh.
- Timing and yieldServes four or five as written. Allow the assembled dish at least two hours in the refrigerator; the soak is what makes it.
The "acidulated" in the title is doing real work: the sharpness of lemon and Seville orange carries the dish. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, a late-Victorian compendium running to thousands of entries, was aimed squarely at middle-class households keeping a modest table, and its habit of printing a "probable cost" for a dish — 1s. 2d. here — reflects a readership budgeting to the penny. Sponge cake soaked in flavoured liquid and buried under custard is one of the oldest patterns in English cookery, and it survived so long partly because it gave stale cake a second life. The pink sugar scattered on top was standard Victorian garnish, tinted with cochineal.