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Aunt Susie's Pudding
Beat a quarter of a pound of butter to a cream. Stir gradually into it two table-spoonfuls of ground rice, and the same of fine flour, sugar to taste, the thin rind of half a lemon chopped small, two ounces of candied orange-or citron-peel, a breakfast-cupful of new milk, and two well-beaten eggs. Flavour with a few drops of essence of almonds, pour the mixture into a well-oiled mould, tie in a cloth, and boil it. Turn out, and serve with sweet sauce. A little brandy will be an improvement. Time to boil, two hours. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A boiled milk pudding of the plainest Victorian sort: a batter thickened with ground rice, set in a mould and steamed in the pot for two hours. The technique matters more than the ingredients, which are few.
- The hinge: it is a steamed pudding, not a baked oneThe hinge: it is boiled or steamed in water, not baked -- Grease the mould, cover the top with a pleated round of buttered parchment or foil before tying the cloth over it, and stand it in a pan of simmering water reaching halfway up the sides (a modern stand-in for the full immersion "boil it" implies). Keep the water at a bare simmer and top it up with boiling water as it falls; if the pan boils dry the pudding scorches.
- MeasuresA quarter pound of butter is 4 oz (115 g). A breakfast-cupful is roughly a half-pint, so about 10 fl oz / 300 ml — a generous US cup and a quarter. Two tablespoonfuls each of ground rice and flour is a very slack batter by modern eyes; that is intentional, since the rice swells during the long steaming.
- "Fine flour" and "new milk"Fine flour is plain white flour, not self-raising. New milk is fresh whole milk, straight from that morning's delivery; ordinary whole milk is the equivalent.
- Sugar to tasteNo quantity is given. About 3 oz (85 g) caster sugar suits the quantity of butter and milk. The recipe stirs it in with the rest, though creaming it into the butter first will lighten the mixture; there is no chemical leavening, only the two well-beaten eggs.
- Essence of almondsNineteenth-century essence was made from bitter almonds and was generally stronger than most of what is sold now, though strengths varied. Use a commercial almond extract and keep to the "few drops" — three or four is plenty, or it will taste of marzipan and nothing else.
- Candied peelTwo ounces (55 g), chopped small. Citron peel is harder to find than orange; either works, and the lemon rind should be pared thin with a peeler so no white pith goes in, then minced fine rather than grated.
- TimingTwo hours is the time given. Test with a skewer through the centre — it should come out clean — and let the pudding stand five minutes before turning out so it firms enough to hold its shape.
- Sauce and serving"Sweet sauce" means a simple sugar-and-butter or thin custard sauce. The recipe does not say where the brandy goes; the sauce is the likelier place. Serves four to five as written; the pudding is best eaten hot, as it stiffens noticeably on cooling.
Boiled and moulded puddings of this kind were a common sweet course of the English middle-class table, cheap enough for the book to put a price on it — one shilling for a dish feeding five. Ground rice appears here alongside wheat flour and was a familiar item in Victorian larders, giving puddings and moulds a firm, slightly granular set. The homely attribution is typical of nineteenth-century cookery books, which collected family names — Aunt Susie, Mrs. Beeton's various correspondents — as a kind of shorthand for a domestic recipe passed along rather than invented in a professional kitchen; no particular Susie can be identified.