Home › The Principles of Cookery › Crumpet and Muffin Pudding
Crumpet and Muffin Pudding
Butter a plain round mould, and place in it alternately two muffins and three crumpets. Split open the muffins and put a little red currant jelly in each. Pour over them a light batter, cover the mould closely, and boil or steam for an hour and a half. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for five persons.
A frugal Victorian pudding built from day-old bakery goods, steamed in a covered mould. The recipe assumes you already know how to mix a batter, so the one real gap is quantity.
- The batter is left to youCassell's assumes the reader knows what a "light batter" is; something on the order of 2 eggs beaten into 1 pint of milk (imperial, 20 fl oz, about 2½ US cups) with 2-3 oz flour and a spoonful of sugar, essentially a thin Yorkshire pudding or custard batter, is a reasonable guess. The original gives no quantities at all, so treat any figure as a reconstruction rather than the book's intent.
- Muffins are English muffinsIn a British book of this date a muffin is the flat yeasted griddle bread, never the American cupcake-shaped quick bread. Crumpets are the holed, spongy relatives; both should be a day or two old so they soak without collapsing.
- Cover the mould properlyA Victorian cook tied a floured cloth or buttered paper over the top. A sheet of buttered foil pleated across the centre and tied under the rim does the same job and keeps condensation out of the batter.
- Boil means a water bathTo boil a pudding of this kind, the mould stands on a trivet or folded cloth in a deep pan of simmering water reaching two-thirds up the sides, topped up as it evaporates. Steaming in a covered pan over an inch of water gives a slightly lighter result and less risk of water getting in.
- An hour and a half is rightUnlike many Victorian timings this one is not excessive. The batter has to set through a dense mass of bread, and gentle steam is the only way to do it without curdling the egg.
- Jelly placementRed currant jelly spread inside the split muffins will melt and run during the long steam. Use a scant teaspoon per muffin and keep it away from the edges, or it will pool at the bottom of the mould and stick when you turn out.
- Turning outLet the pudding stand five minutes off the heat before inverting; the batter firms as it cools slightly. A well-buttered mould and a sharp downward shake are usually enough.
- Yield and servingFive portions, as stated. Serve hot with pouring cream, a thin custard, or more warmed currant jelly let down with a spoonful of water.
Puddings of this sort belong to the large Victorian family of dishes designed to use up stale baked goods: bread pudding, cabinet pudding, and the various "cake puddings" all work on the principle that yesterday's bread plus eggs and milk equals today's dinner. Crumpets and muffins were commonly bought rather than baked at home, sold from the muffin man's covered tray, and both go leathery within a day, which made them exactly the sort of leftover a careful kitchen was expected to redeem. Cassell's habit of quoting a probable cost and a number of persons served, here 8d. for five, is generally taken to reflect the book's audience of middle-class housekeepers managing a budget, for whom a shilling saved on a sweet course was apparently worth printing in the text.