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ALBERT PUDDING (another way)
Well beat two ounces of butter to a cream, and stir into it the yolks of three eggs. Add gradually three ounces of sugar, two ounces of flour, two ounces of bread-crumbs, quarter of a pound of sultana raisins, and the whites of the eggs well whisked. Pour into a buttered mould, cover with an oiled paper and a cloth, and steam it. Serve with wine sauce. Time to steam, three hours. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for four persons.
A small Victorian steamed sponge, light on flour and heavy on fruit. Nothing here is difficult, but the batter is delicate and the stated steaming time is far longer than the pudding needs.
- Fold, don't stir, the whitesThe recipe says "add" the whisked whites along with everything else, but this pudding has no raising agent beyond the air in them. Beat the whites to soft peaks and fold them in last, in two additions, keeping the mixture loose.
- Mould sizeTwo ounces each of butter and flour with three eggs makes a modest batter — roughly a pint of mixture. Choose a basin large enough that it is no more than two-thirds full, so the sponge has room to rise.
- "An oiled paper and a cloth"Butter a round of baking parchment and lay it over the basin, then cover with foil, pleating both across the centre to allow expansion. Tie under the rim with string and make a loop handle for lifting.
- Steaming timeThree hours suits a much larger, denser pudding. A basin of this size should be done in about 1.25 to 1.5 hours; test with a skewer at the hour mark rather than trusting the stated time.
- Setting up the steamerStand the basin on a trivet or folded cloth in a deep pan, add boiling water to come halfway up the sides, and keep it at a bare simmer with the lid on. Top up with boiling water — cold water will check the rise.
- SultanasModern sultanas are probably softer and sweeter than the dried fruit this assumes. Toss them in a spoonful of the measured flour before folding in, or they settle to the bottom.
- Wine sauceA sweet hot sauce flavoured with sherry or madeira, poured over. Cassell's gives wine sauce as a separate entry; any sweet sherry sauce answers.
- YieldFour servings, as stated, and small ones; it is a light pudding by the standards of the period.
Puddings named for Prince Albert appear across mid- and late-Victorian cookery books, part of a broad habit of attaching royal names to genteel dishes — Victoria sandwich, Albert biscuits, Albert sauce. The Albert puddings tend to be a family rather than a fixed recipe: small steamed sponges enriched with butter and eggs, studded with dried fruit, and served with a wine or custard sauce, and in this instance using breadcrumbs and creamed butter rather than the shredded suet of heavier puddings. Cassell's habit of printing "another way" beneath a first version is consistent with the way such dictionaries were assembled, from many contributed and borrowed sources rather than one kitchen. The costing — one shilling, sufficient for four — would have suited households working to a fixed weekly allowance for the table, though the book does not say so.