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Flour Pudding, Hasty
Make a smooth batter with two ounces of fine flour and a pint of milk. Boil it in a clean saucepan over a slow fire until quite thick: add sugar to sweeten, half an ounce of butter, a few drops of the essence of ratafia, and a little grated nutmeg. Let it stay till cold; then beat into the batter three eggs, and bake in a dish lined or not with thin paste. A layer of marmalade, or any other preserve, on the paste at the bottom of the dish is much approved of; or the pudding may be eaten simply boiled as above, and served hot with cold butter, sugar, and nutmeg. Time to bake, half an hour. Probable cost, 7d. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A thin flour-and-milk panada, cooled, enriched with eggs and baked — essentially a frugal Victorian custard that leans on starch rather than cream. The hinge is cooling the batter before the eggs go in.
- Cool it, then add the eggsIf the eggs go into hot batter they scramble, and the baked pudding can turn grainy; hence the recipe's own instruction to let the batter stand till cold. Beat them in once it is cool.
- Quantities in modern termsTwo ounces of fine flour is about 56 g, or a scant half cup; an imperial pint of milk is 20 fl oz, so about 2 1/2 US cups. Half an ounce of butter is a tablespoon. Sugar is left to taste; 2 to 3 tablespoons would suit this quantity of milk.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given, and the recipe uses no oven-heat term of any kind. A pudding of this type suits a moderate oven, somewhere in the region of 325 to 350F, for the stated half hour; it is done when the centre is just set with a slight tremble.
- Boiling the batter"Over a slow fire until quite thick" means treating it as a pastry cream: whisk the flour into cold milk first, then stir constantly over low heat for 5 to 8 minutes so the starch cooks out and the raw flour taste goes. Scorching on the base is the usual failure.
- Essence of ratafiaA Victorian flavouring, usually bitter-almond based and sometimes fortified with peach or apricot kernel. Substitute a few drops of ordinary almond extract; a scant 1/4 teaspoon is plenty for a pint of milk.
- "Thin paste"A plain shortcrust lining, rolled thin. Because the filling bakes only half an hour and is wet, blind-bake the shell until dry and pale before filling, or the base will not crisp — particularly if you use the layer of marmalade underneath.
- The boiled versionServed as a hot pudding straight from the pan, this is closer to a flour porridge or hasty pudding. It thickens further as it cools, so serve it at once with the butter, sugar and nutmeg.
- YieldTwo or three portions as written, in a dish holding about a pint and a half. The cost of 7d is of its own moment and no guide to anything now.
"Hasty pudding" in British usage meant any pudding thickened quickly on the stove with flour, oatmeal or semolina rather than left to steam for hours, and it belonged to the plain end of the household repertoire — a way of turning a pint of milk into a dish for three. What this recipe does is characteristic of late-Victorian domestic cookery: take the cheap boiled pudding, cool it, bind it with eggs, line the dish with pastry and spread preserve underneath, and the same few pennyworth of material becomes a baked pudding fit for the table. The ratafia flavouring points the same way. Ratafia was originally a sweetened almond- or kernel-flavoured cordial, and by the nineteenth century its name had attached to a bottled essence and to the small bitter-almond biscuits sold for trifles, giving a marzipan note to milk puddings at very little cost.