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Batter Pudding, Boiled
Get one ounce of melted butter. Mix three table-spoonfuls of flour with a little milk, and thin it to a proper consistency with the rest of a pint, using it very gradually, that the batter may be quite smooth. Stir in the butter in its dissolved state, and keep moving the batter while three eggs, which have been well beaten, are added. A pinch of salt must not be omitted. Put the mixture into a well-buttered basin; tie a cloth over it, and put it to boil at once, or the batter will settle at the bottom. It will take one hour and a quarter, an should be moved in the saucepan for a few minutes after it is put to boil. Probable cost, 7d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A plain boiled batter pudding of the sort that preceded baked Yorkshire pudding in most English kitchens. Nearly everything that can go wrong here happens in the first five minutes of boiling.
- Keep it moving at the startThe instruction to move the pudding in the pan for the first few minutes is the hinge. A thin batter separates the moment it is left alone, giving a dense flour layer at the base and a spongy cap; agitating the basin until the mixture begins to set prevents this.
- A pintAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, or 2 1/2 US cups. The flour is thinned with a little of it first, then the remainder is worked in gradually to keep the batter lump-free.
- The flour measure is genuinely vagueThree tablespoonfuls of flour to a full imperial pint of milk gives a batter far looser than modern practice would use for a boiled pudding. Period spoon measures were not standardised and spoonfuls may well have been heaped, so the intended quantity was probably more flour than three level modern tablespoons. Treat the stated quantity with suspicion and aim for a batter about the consistency of thin cream.
- Basin and clothA ceramic pudding basin, buttered heavily. Fill it no more than two-thirds, since the pudding rises. The cloth should be scalded, floured on the inside face, and tied tight under the rim with string, with the corners knotted over the top so they do not trail into the water.
- The waterThe pan must already be at a rolling boil when the basin goes in, and the water should come two-thirds up the sides. Keep it boiling for the full time and top up only with boiling water from a kettle; cold water added mid-cook will check the rise.
- One ounce of butter, meltedTwo tablespoons, cooled slightly before it goes in, so that it does not set the flour and milk on contact. The beaten eggs go in after the butter, with the batter kept moving.
- Timing and servingAn hour and a quarter is what the recipe states. Use a basin big enough that the batter fills it no more than two-thirds. Rest it a minute or two before turning out. It is a neutral pudding, served either sweet with jam, golden syrup or sugar and lemon, or alongside roast meat with gravy.
- Yield and costFive or six as written. The 7d. is a period price, useful only as a reminder that this was a cheap way to stretch a small amount of flour, milk and eggs into a filling course.
Batter puddings were boiled before they were baked. A cloth-tied basin needed only a pot of water over the fire, while a baked batter needed an oven or a dripping pan set beneath roasting meat. The same mixture of flour, milk and eggs, poured under a joint instead of into a basin, is what became Yorkshire pudding; boiled in a basin it stays pale and close-textured, more custard than crust.