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Clarendon Pudding
Pour a large breakfast-cupful of boiling milk upon three table-spoonfuls of sifted sugar and the thin rind of a lemon. Let it stand until it cools; then stir it gradually into four wellbeaten eggs. Remove the crust from two French rolls, cut them into slices, and butter each slice thickly on both sides. Butter a plain round mould, stick some raisins on the inside in lines, and fill the mould with layers of rolls, raisins, and custard. Soak for an hour, then cover the pudding with a floured cloth and boil or steam it. Time to boil or steam, one hour and a half. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A moulded bread-and-butter custard, boiled or steamed rather than baked. The measures are Victorian household measures rather than precise ones, and the custard needs gentler heat than the word "boil" suggests.
- A large breakfast-cupfulA breakfast cup is roughly 8-10 fl oz; "large" pushes it to about 10-12 fl oz, so call it 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups of milk. With four eggs that gives a firm custard that will hold its shape when turned out.
- French rollsNot baguette. In this period a French roll is a small, soft, light white roll with a thin crust, closer to a modern soft dinner roll. Two of them give only a modest quantity of crumb once the crust is off.
- Infuse, then temperThe pause while the sweetened milk cools with the lemon rind is both flavour and insurance: pouring hot milk straight onto beaten eggs curdles them. Stir the cooled milk into the eggs gradually and strain out the rind before assembling.
- Boil means simmerA custard held at a rolling boil will curdle and weep. Stand the covered mould on a trivet in a pan with water reaching halfway up its sides, keep the water at a bare simmer, and top up with boiling water as it falls. A steamer basket does the same job with less watching.
- The cloth, or a modern lidThe floured cloth is tied over the mould to keep condensation off the pudding. Buttered parchment and a sheet of foil, pleated across the middle to allow rise and tied under the rim, does the same and is easier to handle.
- Raisins in linesThey are pressed into the butter coating the mould so they set into the surface and show as a pattern when the pudding is turned out. Press them firmly and chill the buttered mould for a few minutes before filling so they stay put.
- Timing and testingAn hour and a half at a steady simmer is about right for a mould of the size this quantity implies, though the recipe never states one. It is done when a skewer into the centre comes out clean; let it stand five to ten minutes before unmoulding or it may slump.
- Cost and yieldTenpence was a real guide to thrift in the period. It serves four or five, and would take a pouring custard, cream or a lemon or apricot sauce alongside.
Cassell's is full of puddings carrying the names of noble houses, streets and fashionable hotels, and Clarendon may well be one of them, though no cookbook of the period explains the christening. What is clear is the dish itself: a boiled version of bread-and-butter pudding, dressed up. Buttered slices of a soft roll, a lemon-scented custard and raisins set decoratively into a buttered mould make something that could be sent to table whole and turned out. Boiling and steaming puddings in a cloth-covered basin was the ordinary method in kitchens where the oven was in use for the roast or was fired only occasionally, and a moulded pudding gave the cook a presentable centrepiece for well under a shilling.