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Nouilles Pudding
Make some nouilles pastry as before directed. Cut and dry the nouilles, throw them into boiling water, and let them simmer until soft. Take them up with a strainer, and stir into them, while hot, two ounces of fresh butter; beat three ounces of butter to a cream, mix with it the well-whisked yolks of three eggs, and add this to the rest. Butter a pudding mould rather thickly, cover the inside with bread raspings; whisk the whites of the eggs to a firm froth. Gently stir them into the pudding, put it into the mould, and bake in a moderate oven. Time to bake, about half an hour. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A baked noodle pudding built on fresh egg pasta, lightly bound with creamed butter and whipped whites. It is very rich and, as written, unsweetened.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirThe whites are the only lift in the dish. Fold them through the buttery noodles in two additions with a spatula, keeping as much air as possible; if they are beaten into the mixture the pudding bakes into a dense slab.
- Nouilles pastryThe dough is given elsewhere in the book and its proportions are not stated here; noodle doughs of the period are typically flour, egg yolk, a little salt and just enough water to bind, kneaded firm, rolled very thin, floured, rolled up and shredded. A workable ratio is about 1 cup (4 1/2 oz) flour to 2 yolks.
- Cooking the noodlesThe recipe has you cut and dry the nouilles before boiling, and "simmer until soft" suits noodles dried firm. Fresh thin nouilles need only a few minutes, roughly 3 to 5, in boiling water. Boil them until slack and the pudding will be mushy, since they cook again in the oven.
- Bread raspingsRaspings are the dried outer crusts of a loaf, grated to a coarse powder — the Victorian equivalent of dry breadcrumbs. Plain dried breadcrumbs work; panko is too flaky to give the even brown shell intended here.
- Moderate ovenConventionally reckoned at roughly 350F / 175C, though the book gives no temperature. Half an hour at that heat should set the eggs and brown the crumb coating; the pudding should be just firm at the centre.
- Mould and turning outAbout a 1 to 1 1/2 quart plain mould or charlotte tin, buttered thickly so the raspings stick. Let it stand five minutes before inverting, or the crumb crust tears away.
- Fat contentFive ounces of butter (140 g) to three eggs and a modest quantity of noodles is heavy by current taste. Cutting the creamed butter from three ounces to two gives a lighter pudding without changing the structure.
- Sweet or savouryThe recipe as printed is neutral and directs neither. It can be taken either way: served with meat, or sweetened with a couple of ounces of sugar, grated lemon rind and a few currants worked in with the yolks. Season with salt and nutmeg if taking the savoury route.
- YieldFour to five as the book says, which by modern portions is closer to six as a side dish.
Nouilles is simply the French word for noodles, and its appearance in an English dictionary of cookery reflects how thoroughly Victorian professional kitchens worked in French -- the recipe's "as before directed" sends the reader to a separate nouilles pastry entry, as one would look up in a chef's manual. Baked noodle puddings bound with butter and eggs are long established in central Europe, and the dish is often compared to the Jewish lokshen kugel, though the two are better understood as parallel uses of the same cheap, keepable ingredient than as one descending from the other. The costing, one shilling for four or five people, places it among the economical dishes of the book: flour, eggs and butter.