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Leamington Pudding
Beat a quarter of a pound of fresh butter to a cream, mix with it a quarter of a pound of fine flour and a quarter of a pound of sugar, which has been well rubbed upon the rind of a lemon, and then powdered; add a tiny pinch of salt, a pint of cream, the yolks of six eggs and the whites of two, whisked to a firm froth. Butter three round pudding-moulds of different sizes, pour in the mixture, and bake in a quick oven. Serve the puddings one on the top of the other, the largest at the bottom, and spread a layer of good jam between each. Wine-sauce should be sent to table with this pudding. Time to bake, one hour. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A baked custard batter turned out in three graduated tiers and stacked with jam — closer to a Victorian pudding-cake than to a steamed pudding. Two things in the original need attention: the oven and the moulds.
- Ignore "quick oven" for an hourA Victorian quick oven is usually reckoned at roughly 400-450F, and this batter is mostly cream and egg yolk; an hour at that heat risks curdling and cracking it. Bake at 325-350F, and check the smallest mould first, since it will be done long before the largest.
- The pint is imperialCassell's pint is 20 fl oz (about 570 ml), so a little under 2 1/2 US cups of cream. Single or whipping cream both work; the yolks are what set it.
- Weights, convertedA quarter pound each of butter, flour and sugar is 4 oz — 1 stick butter, a scant cup of flour, a generous half cup of sugar. Weighing is more reliable than cups here because the batter's balance is what holds it together.
- Rubbing sugar on the lemonDragging a sugar lump or loose sugar across the zest pulls the oils out without any bitter pith. It is the whole flavouring of the pudding, so use an unwaxed lemon and take the sugar to a pale yellow before you powder it.
- Which eggs get whiskedThe phrasing is ambiguous, but the sense is that the two whites are whisked to a firm froth and folded in last; the six yolks go in with the cream. Fold rather than beat, or you lose the lift.
- The mouldsThree round moulds "of different sizes" means graduated cake tins or charlotte moulds; the recipe gives no dimensions, so any graduated set that takes the batter between them will do, filled no more than two-thirds. Butter them well and line the bases with parchment; a set custard batter grips.
- Assembly and jamLet the puddings settle five minutes before turning out, then stack warm with a thin layer of raspberry or apricot jam between. Warm the jam slightly so it spreads without tearing the surface.
- Wine sauceA Victorian wine sauce is sweet: sherry or Madeira thickened lightly with butter, sugar and a little cornflour, served hot in a boat. Custard or a jam sauce does the same job if you would rather not.
- YieldSix to eight, as stated. The 2s. 6d. is a later nineteenth-century ingredient cost, not a portion price.
Cassell's is a dictionary rather than a single cook's notebook, and it collected puddings named for towns, spas and country houses — Leamington among them, presumably for Royal Leamington Spa, the Warwickshire watering place that boomed in the first half of the nineteenth century. Nothing documents a specific inventor or a local origin. What is period-specific is the construction: a rich cream-and-yolk batter baked in graduated moulds and built into a tiered tower with jam between the layers, the sort of dining-room set piece that only made sense in a household with a cook, several moulds and someone to carry it in whole. The rubbing of sugar on lemon rind is older still, standard practice before bottled extracts, and it remains the best way to get lemon oil into a batter.