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GINGER PUDDING (another way)
Chop very small three ounces of preserved ginger, and squeeze over it a tea-spoonful of lemon-juice. Put a breakfast-cupful of milk into a saucepan, with a quarter of a pound of butter, and a quarter of a pound of sugar. Let it boil, then draw it to the side, and mix with it, very smoothly, six ounces of flour. Put it on the fire again, and beat it very smoothly, until it comes up with the spoon in a lump, leaving the sides of the saucepan quite clear. Take it off, mix with it the chopped ginger, the yolks of four eggs whisked thoroughly, and the syrup of the ginger. Just before cooking, add the whites of the eggs, beaten to a firm froth. Put the pudding into a well-buttered mould, and steam it for one hour. Turn out, and serve with wine sauce. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. Sufficient for five or six persons. This pudding is very good baked.
This is a panada or choux-style pudding: flour cooked into hot milk and butter, enriched with yolks and lightened with whipped whites. The technique is the whole recipe, and it rewards a little precision.
- The hinge: cook the paste properlyBeat the flour into the boiling milk and butter over heat until the mass balls up and leaves the pan sides clean, exactly as for choux paste. Underdone paste tastes of raw flour and the pudding sinks; a minute or two of steady beating drives off enough moisture to hold the eggs.
- Breakfast-cupfulA breakfast cup in Victorian usage is roughly half an imperial pint, about 10 fl oz or 1¼ US cups. Anything from 8 to 10 fl oz will work here, but stay at the lower end if your flour is soft.
- WeightsThree ounces preserved ginger is about 85 g; a quarter pound each of butter and sugar is 115 g; six ounces flour is 170 g. Ordinary plain (all-purpose) flour is correct " no raising agent is used, the eggs do the lifting.
- Preserved ginger and its syrupThis means stem ginger in heavy syrup, sold in jars, not crystallised ginger and not fresh root. The recipe never says how much syrup: two tablespoons is a sensible reading, and more will slacken the mixture.
- Folding the whitesLet the paste cool to warm before the yolks go in, or they scramble. Beat the whites to a firm but not dry froth and fold them in immediately before the pudding goes into the mould, as the text says " they begin to deflate on standing.
- The mould and the steamingButter a 1½-pint (about 900 ml) mould or basin, fill it no more than three-quarters, and cover with pleated buttered paper or foil so condensation cannot drip in. Steam at a bare simmer for the full hour and top up the water from the kettle, never cold.
- If you bake it insteadThe recipe gives no oven guidance beyond the closing line that it is 'very good baked'. A moderate modern oven, around 350F/180C, for roughly 40-45 minutes in a buttered dish is a reasonable reading. Baked, it puffs and browns and is closer to a souffle pudding; steamed, it is denser and moister.
- Wine sauceThe usual period sauce is a butter-and-sugar sauce let down with sherry or Madeira, sometimes lightly thickened, served hot and poured round. A sabayon or plain pouring cream with a little of the ginger syrup does the same job.
- YieldFive or six as written, which is a modest portion by current standards; four is more realistic as a dessert on its own.
Puddings built on a cooked flour-and-milk panada were common in nineteenth-century English kitchens because they were reliable: the flour is gelatinised before the eggs arrive, so the mixture holds together in a steamer without curdling or separating. The luxury here is the preserved ginger, imported in syrup from China and the West Indies, often in stoneware jars. The book gives the whole pudding a probable cost of 1s. 2d., a costing it supplies for almost every dish. Steamed puddings of this kind occupied the same place in a Victorian dinner that a warm dessert with sauce does now, and the phrase "another way" at the head of the recipe simply marks it as an alternative to another ginger pudding printed nearby.