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German Pudding, Baked
Put a pint of new milk into a saucepan, with the thinly-peeled rind of a large lemon. Let it stand by the side of the fire, to draw out the flavour of the lemon, and, when it is warm, stir into it till melted a quarter of a pound of fresh butter. Let it get nearly cold. Mix two ounces of flour very smoothly with a little cold milk, and mix it gradually with the milk and butter. Sweeten the mixture with two table-spoonfuls of sugar, and put in the yolks of four, and the whites of two, eggs, well-beaten. Three-parts fill some well-buttered cups with the mixture; bake till firm. Put two well-beaten eggs, two glasses of sherry, and four lumps of sugar into an enamelled saucepan. Beat over the fire to a froth, pour round the puddings, and serve immediately. Time to bake, half an hour. Probable cost, 1s., exclusive of the wine. Sufficient for eight or nine cups.
A baked custard set with a little flour, served in individual cups under a hot sherry froth. The froth is the part that can go wrong; everything else is straightforward.
- The sauce is the hingeBeat the eggs, sherry and sugar over gentle heat — a bowl over simmering water gives far more control than a pan on direct heat. It must thicken to a foam without ever approaching a boil, or you get sweet scrambled egg in wine.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no oven setting, only "bake till firm" in half an hour. A moderate oven, around 350F/175C, suits a custard baked in cups. Standing the cups in a roasting tin of hot water helps keep the edges from curdling before the centres set.
- New milkFresh whole milk, unskimmed and unsoured. Modern whole milk is the right substitute; nothing else in the recipe depends on the difference.
- Glasses of sherryA wine glass in Victorian receipts runs about 2 to 2 1/2 fl oz, so two glasses is roughly 1/2 cup. A medium or cream sherry suits the sweetness better than a dry fino.
- Lumps of sugarFour lumps is roughly four teaspoons of granulated sugar, though Victorian lumps varied in size. The two tablespoons in the pudding itself make a barely sweet custard, with the sauce carrying most of the sweetness.
- CupsEight or nine cups means teacup-sized moulds, about 4 fl oz each, filled three-quarters full — modern ramekins of that size work directly. Butter them well; the flour makes the custard cling.
- The lemon rindPeel it thinly with no white pith, infuse it in the warm milk, and lift it out before the flour goes in. Left in, it will bake into the puddings as tough strips.
- Egg proportionsFour yolks and two whites is deliberate — the extra yolks enrich without making the set rubbery. Do not round it up to four whole eggs.
- ServingEight or nine small puddings, so six to eight people as a dessert. The froth collapses within a few minutes, which is why the original insists on serving immediately.
Nineteenth-century English cookery books seem to have used "German" loosely, as a label for puddings and cakes richer in butter and egg than the suet-and-flour English standard, and often served with a wine sauce rather than a sweet white sauce. The sauce here is essentially a sabayon or Weinschaumsauce — eggs, sugar and fortified wine whisked over heat until foaming — a preparation common across German and Italian kitchens. The cost is given as one shilling "exclusive of the wine," a reminder of how much of a dish's expense could come from the bottle. The enamelled saucepan is specified for good reason: eggs and wine are generally said to react with bare iron and unlined copper, leaving the sauce with a metallic tinge and a grey cast.