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Manchester Pudding
Boil three table-spoonfuls of grated bread-crumbs in half a pint of milk, which has been previously flavoured with vanilla or lemon-peel, for three or four minutes; add to it when off the boil the yolks of two eggs, a piece of butter the size of an egg, eight lumps of sugar, and half a gill of brandy. Place a layer of any rich jam (greengage, strawberry, or apricot) at the bottom of a pie-dish, pour in the mixture when cold, ornament the edge of the dish with a border of puff-paste, and bake for an hour. This pudding may be eaten either hot or cold; if hot, whip the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth with a little sugar, spread it over the top of the pudding, and return it to the oven for five minutes to set. If to be eaten cold, merely sift some powdered sugar over it and serve. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A baked breadcrumb custard over jam, edged with puff pastry — closer to a Queen of Puddings than to a bread pudding. The measurements are Victorian imperial and one of them, the sugar, needs translating before you start.
- Half a pint, half a gillAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, or 1¼ US cups of milk. A gill is a quarter-pint, so half a gill of brandy is 2½ fl oz — roughly ¼ cup plus a splash.
- Eight lumps of sugarVictorian loaf sugar was cut into cubes of varying size; eight lumps is somewhere between 1 and 1½ oz, so about 2 to 3 tablespoons of granulated sugar. Err on the lower side and sweeten the meringue instead.
- Butter the size of an eggUsually reckoned at about 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons, though the measure varied from cook to cook and egg to egg.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; domestic ranges of the period were not fitted with calibrated dials or thermometers as standard. A pudding of this kind wants a moderate oven, 325–350F; hotter and the custard curdles round the edge before the middle sets. An hour is realistic at that heat in a shallow pie-dish.
- Cool the mixture, as instructedPouring the custard in cold is not fussiness — warm custard will melt and muddy the jam layer and lift it into the batter. Let it come to room temperature first.
- Three tablespoonfuls of crumbsThat is a very small amount of bread for 10 fl oz of milk, so expect a soft, barely-set custard rather than a sliceable pudding. If you want it firmer, use a third egg yolk rather than more crumbs.
- The meringueFive minutes will colour a soft meringue but leaves it essentially uncooked in the centre. Give it 10–12 minutes at 325F, or use a hotter oven briefly if you want peaks browned and set.
- Puff-paste borderA strip of bought puff pastry pressed round the rim of the dish, egg-washed, does the job. It is decorative.
- YieldThe book's four or five servings assumes a Victorian multi-course dinner. Four is more like it now.
Manchester pudding appears in a number of nineteenth-century household books, generally in this form: jam beneath, a brandy-flavoured breadcrumb custard above, meringue or sugar on top. Its link with the city is traditional rather than documented, and a related dish is called Manchester tart when made in a pastry case; the pastry-lined, coconut-topped version familiar from British school dinners is usually treated as part of the same family, though the line of descent is not documented. The costing of 1s. 4d. is a standard feature of the book, presumably to let a cook judge the dish against her housekeeping budget.