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Bachelor's Pudding
Beat up three eggs and add them, with a flavouring of essence of lemon and grated nutmeg, to four ounces each of finely-minced apples, currants, grated bread-crumbs, and two ounces of sugar. Mix thoroughly and boil in a buttered mould for three hours. Probable cost, 9d. Sufficient for four persons.
A plain Victorian boiled pudding, quick to assemble and unusual among its kind for containing no suet. The three-hour boil is the part that needs translating for a modern stove.
- The quantities in gramsFour ounces each of apple, currants and breadcrumbs is about 115 g each; two ounces of sugar is about 55 g. With three eggs the mixture will roughly three-quarters fill a 1-quart (1-litre) pudding basin, though the exact volume will vary with how the fruit and crumbs pack down.
- Boiling means steamingBoiling in a mould -- The buttered mould is covered tightly — buttered paper or foil, pleated to allow rise, then tied down. Victorian "boiling" in a mould could mean either lowering the closed mould into boiling water or standing it in a pan of boiling water coming part-way up the sides; the second is easier to manage. Keep the water at a steady simmer and top up from a kettle of boiling water so the pan never runs dry.
- Three hours is not a misprintLong, gentle steaming is what sets an eggy crumb pudding without curdling it. You can shorten it in a covered steamer basket at a hard boil, but do not attempt to rush it over high dry heat. It is done when a skewer to the centre comes out clean and the pudding shrinks slightly from the mould.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, the small black raisins, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Rinse and dry them if they are dusty, and check for stalks — Victorian dried fruit needed picking over far more than ours does.
- Essence of lemonA concentrated flavouring, lemon oil dissolved in spirit, and probably stronger by volume than most modern lemon extracts, though strengths varied. Use a modern extract sparingly, or the finely grated zest of one lemon, which gives a cleaner flavour.
- BreadcrumbsSoft fresh crumbs from a day-old white loaf, not dry packaged crumb, which will drink the moisture and give a heavy pudding. Grate or pulse the bread and measure by weight.
- The apples"Finely-minced" means chopped very small or coarsely grated. A cooking apple suits the pudding, though a Bramley cooks down to purée where a firmer apple such as Granny Smith keeps more of its shape. Toss the cut apple with a little of the sugar to stop it browning while you mix.
- ServingFour portions, turned out hot. It is a dry-ish pudding by design and wants a sauce — a thin custard, a lemon or brandy sauce, or simply cream.
- Probable cost, 9dCassell's gave a probable cost for almost every recipe, aimed at a housekeeper working to a weekly budget. Ninepence for a pudding feeding four marks this as thoroughly economical fare.
Bachelor's pudding belongs to the long Victorian family of boiled and steamed puddings with domestic names — nursery pudding, cabinet pudding, college pudding, hunter's pudding. The name is often said to be shorthand for frugal and unfussy: no suet, no brandy, no lining of the mould with fruit, just eggs, crumbs, apple and currants in a basin, the sort of thing a man keeping house alone might manage without a cook. Cassell's, which appeared in parts in the 1870s and was later reissued as the New Dictionary of Cookery with several thousand entries arranged alphabetically, aimed squarely at middle-class households running on a stated budget, which is why almost every entry ends with a probable cost and the number of persons served. The steamed pudding is associated with the cast-iron range and the tightly covered basin, which let a cook set something over water in the morning and leave it more or less alone until dinner, though puddings boiled in cloth long predate the range.