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Devonian Pudding
Put a pint of milk into a saucepan, and stir into it gradually two table-spoonfuls of fine flour until it boils. When it thickens slightly, pour it into a basin to cool. Mix in a separate dish the whites of two eggs and the yolks of four well beaten, the grated rind of a small lemon, eight ounces of sugar, and three ounces of butter previously beaten to a cream. Blend this thoroughly with the mixture of milk and flour. Pour into a well-buttered pie-dish, round which has been placed an edging of puff paste, and bake in a quick oven for twenty-five minutes. When ready, dust pounded sugar over it, and serve hot. It may also be used cold. Probable cost, 1s.
A baked flour-thickened custard, closer to a cross between a pastry cream and a sponge than to a set egg custard. Two things decide whether it works: the flour paste must be cooked out and cooled before the eggs go in, and the oven must not be as fierce as "quick" implies for the full time.
- Cook the panada properlyThe milk-and-flour base is a thin panada, and raw flour taste is the usual fault. Whisk the flour into cold milk first, bring it to a boil, and keep it moving for a minute or two after it thickens before pouring it out to cool.
- "A quick oven"Generally reckoned at somewhere around 400-450F. At that heat a milk-and-egg mixture will puff and then curdle at the edges; about 375F for 30-35 minutes, until set with a slight wobble at the centre, is safer in a modern oven. The shorter time given suggests a shallow dish.
- MeasuresA pint here is the imperial 20 fl oz, so about 2 1/2 US cups. Eight ounces of sugar is 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons; three ounces of butter is 6 tablespoons.
- "Fine flour"Plain white flour, sifted. Two tablespoons to a pint gives a very loose base, which is what you want -- it thickens further in the oven from the eggs.
- The egg ratioFour yolks to two whites: the extra yolks enrich, while fewer whites mean less puffing and collapse. Beat the yolks and whites together as directed rather than whipping the whites separately.
- "Pounded sugar"Sugar crushed fine in a mortar -- caster or superfine sugar is the modern equivalent. Granulated will sit in visible grains on a hot surface.
- The puff paste edgingA strip of puff pastry pressed round the rim of the buttered dish, not a lining. It is there to crisp and to give the spoon something to break through; bought all-butter puff is fine, and it browns before the custard sets, so shield it with foil if it colours early.
- Dish and yieldUse a shallow pie dish; the mixture comes to rather more than a pint and a half in volume, so allow room. It serves four to six, and the note that it may be eaten cold is accurate -- it firms considerably as it cools.
- The cost note"Probable cost, 1s." is the shilling estimate Cassell's attached to most entries so a housekeeper could price a menu. It is no guide to anything today beyond telling you this was reckoned an economical sweet.
Cassell's carried dozens of puddings named for counties, and the names are best read as marketing rather than geography -- there is no strong evidence that Devon cooks claimed this one. What the name signals is dairy: Devon meant milk, cream and butter to a Victorian reader, and a pudding built on a pint of milk, four yolks and creamed butter fits that association. The technique underneath it is older, a flour panada slackened with eggs and sugar, the same base that gives soufflé puddings and pastry cream their body; thickening with flour let a cook use fewer eggs and made the mixture far less likely to split than a straight baked custard. The puff-paste edging is a common Victorian finish, often read as a vestige of the older habit of baking sweet mixtures in a full pastry case, kept on here for texture and appearance after the case itself had been dropped.