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Jelly Pudding
Soak the thin rind of a fresh lemon in two table-spoonfuls of spring water for half an hour. While it is soaking, beat five ounces of fresh butter to a cream, add four ounces of pounded and sifted sugar, and, very gradually, the yolks of three eggs, well beaten. Line a small pie-dish with good puff paste. When it is time for the pudding to be baked, mix with it the strained lemon-water, and the whites of the eggs, beaten to a solid froth, and bake in a quick oven. Time, twenty minutes to bake. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for three persons.
A Victorian baked butter pudding in a puff-paste case, closer to a lemon curd tart than anything set with gelatine. The hinge is the egg whites: everything else can be prepared ahead, but the whites are folded in and the dish goes straight into a hot oven.
- A quick ovenRoughly 400-425F (200-220C). The high heat is what lifts the puff paste and sets the filling. Twenty minutes is realistic at that temperature for a small dish; the top should be puffed and lightly browned and the centre only just firm.
- The thin rindPare the zest off in strips with a peeler, taking no white pith, and steep it in two tablespoons of water. This is the whole flavour of the pudding, so use an unwaxed lemon and scrub it. Strain the water and discard the rind before mixing.
- Pounded and sifted sugarCaster (superfine) sugar. Loaf sugar was crushed and sieved at home to get a grain fine enough to cream with butter; the modern equivalent is straight out of the bag.
- Butter beaten to a creamFive ounces is about 140 g, and it needs to be genuinely soft, not melted. Four ounces of sugar is about 115 g. Add the beaten yolks a spoonful at a time, or the mixture will curdle.
- Folding the whites"A solid froth" means stiff peaks. Fold them in with a large spoon in two additions and stop while a few streaks remain; overmixing here is the difference between a light pudding and a dense, greasy one.
- The pie-dish and the pasteA "small pie-dish" for three people is probably around a pint. Line it with puff pastry, chill it while you make the filling, and do not blind-bake: the recipe gives a single twenty-minute bake with the filling in place.
- Yield and servingThree modest portions, as stated. Serve warm rather than hot, when the lemon comes forward and the filling has firmed enough to cut. The "probable cost, 10d." is a period price note, not an instruction.
The name is a puzzle only until you cut it: there is no jelly in the dish, though what the word is doing there the recipe does not say. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled in late nineteenth-century London, ran to thousands of short entries of exactly this kind, each with a time, a probable cost and a number of persons served, so that a household of known income could plan against a known budget. The pudding itself belongs to the large family of English creamed-butter puddings baked in a paste case, of which lemon cheesecakes and Bakewell puddings are cousins. Steeping the pared rind in water rather than grating it in gives a cleaner, less bitter lemon flavour than a grater does, since none of the pith comes with it.