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Italian Pudding, Boiled
Get two stale rolls, grate the crumb into a pint of milk, and boil it very carefully for ten minutes. Pour it into a basin to cool. Meanwhile, beat the yolks of three eggs, add them to the milk and crumbs, with nearly half a pound of pounded sugar, a flavouring of vanilla, a few currants or Malaga raisins, and, lastly, the whites of the eggs whisked to a firm froth. This pudding should be steamed. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered basin, tie it down, and set it in a saucepan with boiling water reaching to half the height of the basin. Keep it boiling an hour, and serve with wine, brandy, or rum sauce poured over it. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A steamed bread-and-egg pudding of the plainest sort, lifted by the whisked whites. Two things decide whether it succeeds: not scorching the milk, and folding rather than beating in the egg whites.
- The basinA "basin" here is a pudding basin — a heatproof bowl with a lipped rim; allow roughly 2 pints (a little over a litre) for this quantity, so the mixture comes no more than three-quarters up the sides, since the whisked whites give it some lift. Butter it well.
- Tying it downTraditionally a floured cloth or buttered paper tied under the rim with string. A pleated sheet of parchment under foil, tied or crimped tightly, does the same job and keeps condensation out.
- Steamed, not boiledDespite the title and the instruction to "keep it boiling," the water sits only halfway up the basin, so this is steaming. Keep the water at a steady simmer and top it up with boiling water as it falls — a basin that boils dry will crack or scorch.
- The breadTwo stale rolls grated gives roughly 3–4 oz (about 2 cups) of dry crumbs. Use plain white bread crusts trimmed; commercial dried breadcrumbs are too fine and give a pasty texture.
- Scalding the milkBreadcrumbs in milk catch on the bottom of the pan almost at once. Use a heavy saucepan over low heat and stir continuously for the ten minutes, or set the pan in a wider pan of simmering water.
- Pounded sugarPounded sugar is loaf sugar crushed and sifted fine; caster sugar is the nearest modern equivalent. Nearly half a pound (about 7–8 oz, 200 g) to a pint of milk is very sweet by current taste, especially with a spirit sauce over it; 3–4 oz is closer to modern expectations.
- Vanilla and Malaga raisins"A flavouring of vanilla" at this date could mean a split pod steeped in the hot milk, or a few drops of essence — a teaspoon of extract is the modern equivalent. Malaga raisins are large muscatel raisins; any good raisin or currant will do, tossed in a little flour so they do not sink.
- Cooling before the eggsThe instruction to pour into a basin to cool is not optional. Yolks added to hot milk and crumbs will scramble.
- Yield and donenessFour to five servings, as stated. After the hour, a skewer into the centre should come out clean and the pudding should shrink slightly from the sides; let it stand five minutes before turning out.
Bread puddings of this kind were the standard use for stale rolls in a Victorian kitchen, where bread was bought or baked daily and nothing was thrown away — the same logic that produced queen of puddings, cabinet pudding and the whole family of steamed basin puddings that dominate the pudding chapters of nineteenth-century English cookery books. The "Italian" in the name is doing very little work: Cassell's, as compilers of the period often seem to have done, attached national labels loosely, and here it probably signals only the enrichment with beaten whites and a spirit sauce rather than the suet and flour of a plain English pudding. The costing — 1s. 4d. for four or five people — was a standard feature of the format in Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, and the currants or Malaga raisins would have come from the grocer's dried-fruit drawer alongside the sugar loaf that had to be pounded before use.