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Ginger and Bread Pudding
Pour half a pint of boiling milk over half a pint of finely-grated bread-crumbs, and let the latter soak for an hour. Then mix with them three table-spoonfuls of finely-sifted sugar, three well-beaten eggs, a dessert-spoonful of ginger syrup (see GINGER SYRUP) and four ounces of preserved ginger, cut into small pieces. Beat all thoroughly with a fork, pour into a well-oiled mould, steam, and, when done, turn out with care. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for four persons. Time, one hour and a half to steam.
A steamed bread-crumb custard leaning on preserved ginger for its flavour. The recipe is sound as written; most of what needs translating is measurement and equipment.
- Half a pintCassell's uses the imperial pint of 20 fl oz, so half a pint of milk is about 285 ml (a scant 1¼ US cups). The same volume of crumbs may weigh anywhere from about 2 oz, if soft and freshly grated, to roughly double that if dry and fine — the mixture should be a thick, saturated paste, not soup.
- Spoon sizesA Victorian tablespoon is roughly comparable to a modern one; a dessert-spoonful is about 2 teaspoons. 'Finely-sifted' sugar most likely points to a fine caster-type sugar rather than modern icing sugar, though Victorian usage varied.
- Preserved gingerFour ounces (115 g) of stem ginger in syrup, drained and diced — the jarred kind sold for baking. Crystallised ginger will work but is drier and sweeter; rinse off the sugar coating and cut back the syrup slightly.
- Ginger syrupThe book cross-refers to its own GINGER SYRUP entry, but in practice the dessert-spoonful can be taken straight from the jar of stem ginger.
- The mould'Well-oiled' means a plain oil or butter film on a metal or ceramic pudding basin; allow at least 1½ pints (about 900 ml) capacity for this quantity, filled no more than three-quarters. Cover the top with buttered paper or foil so condensation does not water the pudding down.
- SteamingNinety minutes at a bare simmer, water halfway up the basin, topped up with boiling water as it drops. Set the basin on a trivet or folded cloth rather than directly on the pan base.
- Knowing when it is doneThe eggs are the only setting agent here: the pudding should feel firm at the centre and a skewer come out clean. Let it stand five minutes off the heat before turning out, or the edges tear.
- YieldFour small servings, as stated. Cream or a thin custard is the usual accompaniment.
Steamed bread-crumb puddings were the workhorse dessert of the nineteenth-century British kitchen o no no ono oven, only a pot of simmering water, which suited ranges where oven heat was expensive or unreliable. Preserved ginger, the plump rhizome boiled in sugar syrup and imported chiefly from China through the second half of the century, was a grocer's luxury sold in glazed stoneware jars, and Cassell's Dictionary (first issued, by most accounts, in the 1870s and reprinted in expanded form for decades) uses it in puddings, ices and cakes. The cross-reference to a separate ginger syrup entry is typical of the book's method it is arranged as a dictionary, and expects the cook to read sideways.