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Norwegian Puddings
Beat a quarter of a pound of fresh butter to a cream, mix with it a quarter of a pound of ground rice, one ounce of fine flour, a quarter of a pound of powdered sugar, half a tea-spoonful of baking-powder, and any flavouring that may be preferred. Add two well-whisked eggs, and beat all briskly together for four or five minutes. Butter some cups, three-parts fill them with the mixture, and bake in a quick oven. Turn out the puddings when done enough, put them on a dish, and pour over them half a pint of good wine sauce, boiling hot. Sprinkle some powdered sugar over them, and serve at once. Time to bake, about half an hour. Probable cost, 9d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A small baked sponge built on rice flour rather than wheat, steadied by a spoonful of plain flour and served hot under a wine sauce. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the terms mean something different now than they did in the 1890s.
- Ground riceRice milled for cooking; in British usage it is usually a little coarser than the very fine rice flour sold today, nearer a fine semolina. Either will work here. The rice gives a short, slightly sandy crumb; wheat flour throughout would make an ordinary sponge.
- Powdered sugarIn Victorian English this means finely granulated sugar, what is now sold as caster sugar. Modern powdered/icing sugar contains cornstarch and will make the batter pasty. Use caster sugar in the mixture; icing sugar is acceptable for the dusting at the end.
- WeightsA quarter of a pound is 4 oz (115 g), so the batter is 4 oz butter, 4 oz rice flour, 1 oz plain flour, 4 oz sugar, half a teaspoon baking powder and two eggs — a standard pound-cake ratio with rice flour standing in for most of the wheat.
- The cupsVictorian teacups or dariole moulds, perhaps 5-6 fl oz. Butter them well and fill only three-quarters, as instructed; the batter rises and must clear the rim cleanly to turn out. The recipe reckons the quantity sufficient for three or four persons.
- Oven heatA "quick oven" is usually reckoned somewhere around 400-425F. At the upper end small cups may colour before the centres set in the half hour given, so 375-400F suits the stated timing better. They are done when a skewer comes out clean and the tops spring back.
- Creaming the butter"Beat to a cream" means the butter must be soft enough to whip pale and light before anything is added. Rice flour carries no gluten, so the air beaten into the butter and the whisked eggs is doing most of the lifting work — the half teaspoon of baking powder only finishes the job.
- Wine sauceHalf a pint is 10 fl oz in British measure. The period sauce is sweet wine — sherry, madeira or a white wine — warmed with sugar and butter and lightly thickened with cornflour or egg yolk. It must go on boiling hot, over hot puddings, or it sets dull on the plate.
- FlavouringLemon zest, vanilla or a little almond extract all suit rice flour. If you match the flavouring to the wine in the sauce the dish reads as one thing rather than two.
Cassell's is full of small baked and steamed puddings given national names — Norwegian, Swedish, German, Cabinet — and the labels rarely indicate much about origin; they were a way of distinguishing one variation of a stock formula from another in a very large dictionary of dishes. What identifies this one is the rice flour. Ground rice was cheap, kept well, and was regarded through the nineteenth century as light and easily digested, which is why it turns up so often in nursery and invalid cookery as well as in dinner puddings. The wine sauce, on the other hand, marks the dish as a dining-room dessert rather than a schoolroom one, and the note of "probable cost, 9d" for three or four people is a reminder that Cassell's was written for households counting the shillings while still expecting to send something up hot at the end of a meal.