Home › The Principles of Cookery › Orange Marmalade Pudding Made with Bread
Orange Marmalade Pudding Made with Bread
Butter a plain quart mould rather thickly. Spread a little orange marmalade over the bottom, lay on it a thin slice of bread and butter, and repeat until the mould is three parts full. Pour in a custard made with a pint of milk and three well-beaten eggs. Let the bread soak in this for an hour, then cover the pudding closely, and steam it over hot water until it is firm. Let the pudding stand for a minute before turning it out, and serve with sweet sauce. Time, half an hour to steam the pudding. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. Sufficient for half a dozen persons.
A steamed bread-and-butter pudding turned out of a mould, the sort of thrifty sweet that used up stale loaf ends and the last of the marmalade jar. Two things need attention: the mould and the steaming time.
- The mouldA plain quart mould is a smooth-sided basin or charlotte tin of roughly 1.1 litres, with no fluting or pattern to trap the pudding. Butter it heavily and, if you want insurance for turning out, line the base with a disc of buttered baking parchment.
- The custard ratioA pint of milk to three eggs is a light custard by modern standards — around 570 ml to three eggs, or about 480 ml if you read the pint as American. It sets softly, which is what makes the pudding sliceable rather than rubbery, but it means the mould must be filled with bread first or the custard will not hold together.
- The soak mattersThe full hour of soaking is not padding. Dry bread that has not absorbed the custard leaves pale seams inside the pudding and makes it collapse when turned out. Press the top layer down gently once or twice during the hour.
- Steaming timeHalf an hour may well be optimistic for a full quart mould; be prepared to steam it a good deal longer over gently simmering water, topping up the pan as needed. The pudding is done when the centre is firm to a light press and a skewer comes out clean; egg custard sets at around 170-180F.
- Cover it properly"Cover closely" means a lid of buttered foil or parchment tied down, pleated across the middle to allow for rise. Condensation dripping into an uncovered mould will waterlog the top layer.
- Bread and butterUse a firm white loaf a day or two old, cut thin. Fresh soft sandwich bread turns to paste in the custard. Marmalade with real peel gives better texture and bitterness than a smooth jelly type.
- Sweet sauceThe book assumes a plain sweet sauce — a thin custard, or butter creamed with sugar and thinned with a little hot water and brandy. Orange juice warmed with sugar and a knob of butter suits this pudding better than anything creamy.
- Yield and costSix servings, as stated. The "probable cost, 1s. 2d." is a Victorian shilling-and-pence figure for the whole pudding and has no useful modern equivalent.
Steamed and boiled puddings turned out of a mould were the backbone of English domestic sweets through the nineteenth century, when a copper of simmering water was always going and oven space was scarce or expensive. This one belongs to a whole family of bread-based puddings that existed to use up the stale end of a loaf — bread and butter pudding, cabinet pudding, brown betty — and the layer of marmalade marks it as a household with a stocked preserve shelf, since Seville marmalade was made in a short winter season and stored through the year. The instruction to let it stand a minute before turning out is the practical detail that betrays a working kitchen: the pudding shrinks slightly from the mould as it cools, and coming out too soon it tears.