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Ambrose Pudding
Beat a quarter of a pound of butter to a cream, add to it two table-spoonfuls of pounded sugar, the juice of two lemons, a coffee-cupful of new milk, three well-beaten eggs, and twenty drops of essence of almonds. In another bowl mix two table-spoonfuls of chopped raisins, the same of currants, one ounce each of candied lemon, orange, and citron, three large apples chopped small, two table-spoonfuls of marmalade, and a pinch of salt. Well butter a mould, place in it a layer out of each bowl alternately, until both are emptied, and bake in a quick oven. This pudding may be eaten either hot or cold. Time, two hours and a half to bake. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A flourless, suetless baked pudding: a lemon-and-almond custard poured in layers over chopped fruit. The two bowls behave very differently once heat gets to them, so the notes below matter more than usual.
- The oven is the problem"a quick oven" is generally taken to mean something in the region of 400-450F, and nothing containing three eggs and a cup of milk will survive two and a half hours at that heat. Bake it at 325F instead, and expect roughly 1 to 1 1/2 hours for a 1 1/2-pint mould.
- Water bath and coverBecause the liquid mixture is essentially a thin custard, stand the buttered mould in a roasting tin of hot water and cover loosely with foil. Direct dry heat will curdle the egg and milk before the apple has softened.
- Essence of almondsThe strength of Victorian almond essences varied a good deal, and twenty drops of one is not a reliable guide to twenty drops of modern almond extract. Start with 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon. Older essences were sometimes made from bitter almonds; commercial extract today is benzaldehyde-based and needs no thought beyond restraint.
- UnitsA quarter pound of butter is 4 oz (115 g). A coffee-cupful is an unstandardised measure, usually reckoned somewhere around 5-6 fl oz (150-180 ml) and generally smaller than a teacupful; treat it as genuinely approximate. Two tablespoons of pounded sugar is little more than an ounce, so this is a barely sweet pudding leaning on the marmalade and dried fruit.
- Ingredient namesPounded sugar is caster or superfine sugar. New milk is fresh whole milk, unskimmed. Currants are dried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants. Candied citron is still sold at Christmas; if you cannot find it, more candied lemon peel is the usual substitution.
- Expect it to look wrongTwo lemons' worth of juice will curdle the milk and butter on contact. That is expected here — there is no flour to hold anything smooth, and the eggs do all the setting. The neat alternate layers will also merge into a single fruited custard in the oven.
- ApplesChop firm cooking apples small, as directed; large chunks will stay raw at 325F while the custard sets around them. About 3 large apples gives roughly 1 lb prepared.
- ServingFive or six portions, as stated. Turn it out only once fully cold, or serve straight from the mould hot with cream — an eggy pudding this loose will not unmould cleanly warm.
Cassell's arranges its entries alphabetically, which is one reason a pudding of this kind turns up early: the name is doing little work beyond suggesting, perhaps, ambrosia, the food of the gods, a stock Victorian compliment attached to anything rich with candied peel and almonds — though that association is a guess rather than a documented etymology. The recipe belongs to the enormous family of British boiled and baked fruit puddings that surrounded the Christmas pudding, but it is a lighter, more genteel cousin — no suet, no flour, no breadcrumbs, and no hours of steaming. What holds it together is egg and butter, which might suggest a kinship with the eighteenth-century custard-and-fruit puddings rather than the dense mid-Victorian standard, though that is an inference. The "probable cost, 2s." is a characteristic Cassell's touch: candied citron, orange and lemon peel, marmalade and imported dried fruit made this a distinctly middle-class dish at a time when a labourer's weekly wage might be under a pound.