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HASTY PUDDING (another way)
Begin as in the last recipe. When the flour has been well mixed with the milk, add four well-beaten eggs. Beat all over the fire five minutes longer, and serve as before. Time, a quarter of an hour after the milk boils. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
This is a continuation entry: Cassell's assumes you have just read the preceding hasty pudding recipe, so no quantities appear here at all. The base is flour cooked into boiling milk, enriched at the end with eggs.
- The missing baseA common proportion in Victorian English hasty pudding recipes is in the region of 1 quart (roughly 1 litre) of milk to 3-4 oz of flour, with a pinch of salt and sugar to taste, though this varies from book to book. Since this entry gives none of it, treat any figure as a reconstruction rather than the book's own.
- The hinge: eggs off the boilFour beaten eggs stirred into near-boiling starch can curdle into sweet scrambled egg if the heat is not brought down first. Pull the pan to the coolest part of the stove, let the bubbling stop, then beat the eggs in and return it to gentle heat.
- Slake the flourFlour tipped dry into hot milk seizes instantly. Whisk it smooth with a little cold milk first, then pour that into the boiling remainder, which is what "well mixed with the milk" is quietly asking for.
- "Beat all over the fire"An open range gave graded heat across the top; a modern burner does not. Use low heat and a heavy pan, and beat continuously — five minutes of steady work with a wooden spoon or whisk, not a stir every so often.
- TimingA quarter of an hour after the milk boils gives the flour real cooking, which it needs to lose its raw taste. The five minutes with the eggs most likely falls within that total rather than being additional simmering, though the book does not say so outright.
- Probable cost10d is tenpence in pre-decimal currency, twelve pence to the shilling. It marks this as an everyday nursery and family dish rather than a company pudding.
- Serving"Serve as before" refers back to the preceding recipe, which is not reproduced on this page; hot in a deep dish, with butter and sugar, treacle, or jam handed separately, is the usual treatment for puddings of this kind. It sets firm as it cools, so bring it to table straight from the pan. Sufficient for five or six.
Hasty pudding earned its name honestly: it was the pudding you could have on the table in under half an hour, at a time when most boiled and baked puddings meant hours in a cloth or a basin. The English form is flour and milk; the American form, from the colonial period onward, substitutes cornmeal and is closer to what later became mush or polenta-style porridge. It is, in effect, a teaching dish hat sssauces and custards alike, cooking flour into liquid without lumps and tempering eggs into a hot base without scrambling them. The enriched version here, with four eggs beaten in at the end, is the same pudding dressed up: still cheap, but closer to a custard than a porridge, and respectable enough for a family dinner.