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HAMPSHIRE PUDDING (sometimes called Hertfordshire Pudding)
Line the edge of a pie-dish with good puff-paste. Spread some jam at the bottom of the dish, about an inch thick. Beat the yolks of three, and the whites of two eggs thoroughly. Add to them three ounces of loaf sugar, pounded and sifted, and three ounces of melted butter. Beat these together until they are quite thick, pour the mixture over the jam, and place in a moderate oven till the pastry is baked. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A jam tart with a rich egg-and-butter topping, of the same family as transparent pudding and Bakewell. Everything depends on the egg mixture being beaten thick before it meets the jam.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F (175C). The pudding is done when the pastry rim is golden and the topping is set with only a slight wobble at the centre, roughly 30 to 35 minutes.
- Line the edge onlyVictorian pie-dishes were rimmed, and puff-paste was laid along that rim as a border, not across the base. A strip of puff pastry about an inch wide, pressed onto the dampened rim of the dish, is what is meant.
- Loaf sugarSugar came as a hard cone to be broken and pounded. Caster or superfine sugar gives the same result without the mortar; 3 oz is about 6 to 7 tablespoons.
- An inch of jamThat is generous by modern taste, and considerably more jam than a modern tart of this size would carry. Use a thick, well-set preserve rather than a loose one, or it will boil up through the topping.
- Beat until thickThe recipe has the eggs beaten thoroughly first, then the sugar and melted butter beaten in until the mixture is quite thick. The butter should be melted but cool, or it will cook the eggs into strands.
- Two whites, three yolksNot a misprint. The extra yolk would enrich, and holding back one white would tend to keep the topping denser rather than souffled, though the book gives no reason for the proportions. The spare white keeps a day or two, covered, in the fridge.
- Pouring over the jamPour slowly onto the back of a spoon held just above the jam so the layers stay distinct. The topping is shallow, a scant half-inch, and will not need levelling.
- Yield and servingThree or four portions, as stated. Serve warm rather than hot, when the topping has firmed; cream or a plain custard suits it.
The double name is the giveaway: dishes like this travelled by word of mouth between households and printed cookery books, picking up whatever county the writer associated with them, and Cassell's simply records both attributions without deciding. The pudding belongs to a large nineteenth-century English group of "transparent" or "lemon" puddings, in which yolks, sugar and melted butter are beaten together and baked in a pastry case until they set to something between a curd and a custard; Bakewell pudding is the survivor best known today, and it too is built on jam under an egg-rich topping. The inch of jam at the bottom may suggest a period when cheap sugar and factory preserves were bringing jam within reach of ordinary kitchens, though the recipe itself settles nothing on that point, and the costing of one shilling for a dish serving three or four is the kind of detail Cassell's included for readers running a household to a budget rather than a chef's kitchen.