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Chichester Pudding
Rub the rind of half a lemon upon a quarter of a pound of loaf sugar, powder this, and mix it with a crumbled roll, and a quarter of a pound of butter. Add the well-beaten yolks of four eggs, and a dessert-spoonful of lemon-juice. After mixing the ingredients thoroughly, add the whites of two of the eggs beaten to a firm froth. Stir the mixture over the fire to a thin batter, then pour it into a well-buttered pie-dish, and bake in a good oven. Time to bake, about half an hour. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for three persons.
A Victorian baked lemon custard thickened with bread rather than flour. The hinge is the brief cooking over heat before baking: the mixture must thicken only to a thin batter, because a few seconds too long turns four egg yolks into sweet scrambled egg.
- Stirring over the fireUse the lowest possible heat, or a bowl over barely simmering water, and stir constantly until the batter just coats the spoon. Pull it off the heat while it still pours freely; residual heat will carry it further.
- Loaf sugarSugar once came as a hard cone that had to be broken and pounded. Substitute 4 oz (about 1/2 cup) granulated or caster sugar, and rub the whole lemon-half's zest into it with your fingers so the oils are released before you weigh anything else.
- A crumbled rollA plain white dinner roll, preferably a day old, crumbled fine. In modern terms that is roughly 2 oz of soft breadcrumbs, about 1 cup loosely packed. The original is vague here, and the pudding is forgiving: more bread gives a firmer, more cake-like result.
- Butter quantityA quarter of a pound is 4 oz, one US stick. Soften rather than melt it, so it creams into the sugar and crumbs instead of pooling.
- Egg whitesOnly two of the four whites are used, folded in at the end. The remaining two keep in the refrigerator for several days or freeze well; nothing in this recipe wants them.
- A good ovenVictorian oven descriptions are approximate; read this as a moderate oven, somewhere around 350-375F. Half an hour should give a set edge and a slightly trembling centre; a skewer in the middle should come out clean but moist.
- The dishThe recipe only says a well-buttered pie-dish. Allow around a pint and a half so the mixture has room to rise. A wider dish bakes faster and drier, so check early if yours is broad.
- ServingThree portions, as stated, and it wants to go to the table warm from the oven while the top is still risen. Cream or a plain lemon sauce suits it; it collapses somewhat as it cools.
Puddings named for English towns and counties fill Victorian cookery books, and the names rarely record much beyond a compiler's wish to distinguish one lemon-and-breadcrumb mixture from the dozen others in the same chapter. What marks this one is its method: the bread, butter, sugar and yolks are cooked to a thin batter on the stove before baking. The "Probable cost" and "Sufficient for" formula is characteristic of Cassell's, which priced almost every dish; the expense here sits mostly in the butter and eggs. Rubbing a lemon rind onto loaf sugar was one common way to capture citrus oil, though grated rind appears just as often in the same books.