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Meringue Pudding
Pour a quarter of a pint of hot milk over the same measure of bread-crumbs, one ounce of butter, and a lump of sugar that has been rasped on the rind of a lemon. When cool, beat in the yolk of an egg, and bake in a shallow dish till set and a pale brown; spread a little black currant or other fruit jelly on top. Beat the white of the egg, add a tea-spoonful of castor sugar and a few drops of lemon-juice, spread it over the pudding, and return it to the oven for a few minutes to become firm. Probable cost, 8d.
A single-egg bread pudding scaled for one or two people, closer to a queen of puddings than to anything baked in a deep dish. The quantities are small and the measures are imperial.
- A quarter of a pintAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, about 140-150 ml or a generous half cup. The same measure of breadcrumbs means by volume, not weight — roughly 30-40 g of fresh soft crumbs, not dried.
- The rasped sugar lumpRubbing a lump of loaf sugar hard against the lemon rind strips out the coloured zest and its oils. Finely grated zest plus a teaspoon of sugar does the same job; the point is the oil, so zest only the yellow and stop at the pith.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no oven temperature. A moderate oven, around 350F/180C, suits the custard base — it wants to set gently, not souffle. The meringue goes back in briefly at the same heat, or a little higher for colour, and needs only three to five minutes.
- Cool before the yolkThe instruction to wait until the mixture is cool is the hinge. Hot milk and butter will scramble a raw yolk on contact and the pudding will bake grainy.
- Castor sugarCaster sugar, superfine granulated. It dissolves into the beaten white where standard granulated will sit as grit and weep syrup under the meringue.
- The lemon juiceA few drops of acid stabilises the foam, the same function cream of tartar performs. Add it once the white is frothy rather than at the start.
- The jelly layerWarm the blackcurrant jelly slightly and spread it thinly on the hot baked base so it melts level. A cold, stiff jelly tears the surface and leaves the meringue sliding about.
- Yield and dishOne egg's worth serves two at most. A shallow dish of about 500 ml, so the custard sets quickly and the meringue has a wide surface to sit on.
- Probable cost, 8dEightpence in pre-decimal money, from an era when cookbooks costed dishes for the household accounts. It is a note on economy, not a measurement.
Meringue-topped bread puddings were one familiar Victorian answer to the problem of stale bread and the two halves of an egg. The base uses the yolk to enrich a crumb custard, the white is whipped into a topping, and nothing is wasted — the same logic behind queen of puddings, which this recipe is a small, plain relation of. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery belongs to a run of large late-nineteenth-century British household compendiums that alphabetised thousands of such dishes and attached a probable cost to each, aimed at the mistress of a modest household managing a cook and a weekly budget. The rasped sugar lump is a detail worth noticing: hard loaf sugar was itself a tool for extracting citrus oil, and the instruction survives in cookbooks well into the twentieth century.