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Orange Pudding
Rub the rind of a large orange upon three or four lumps of sugar until all the yellow part is taken off. Make the sugar up to four ounces, put it into a bowl, and strain over it the juice of four oranges. Pour half a pint of boiling milk over three ounces of bruised ratafias or spongecake which have been finely crumbled. Add a pinch of salt and a quarter of a small nutmeg, grated. Mix thoroughly the contents of the two bowls, and stir in three well-beaten eggs. Line the edges of a pie-dish with good puff-paste, pour in the mixture, sprinkle a tea-spoonful of powdered ratafias over the top, and bake in a moderate oven for half an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A late-Victorian baked orange custard thickened with crushed almond biscuits rather than flour. The whole thing hinges on managing acid and dairy together.
- The hinge: acid meets milkFour oranges' juice poured into a milk-and-egg custard will curdle if the mixture is hot or the oven is fierce. Let the soaked crumbs cool to lukewarm before combining, mix briskly, and bake gently so the eggs set before the acid separates the milk.
- Half a pintThis is an imperial half pint, 10 fl oz or about 1 1/4 US cups. Scale the other quantities to it rather than using a US half pint.
- Moderate oven350F (175C). Half an hour will set a shallow pie-dish of this depth; the centre should wobble as a whole rather than ripple. Overbaking gives a weeping, grainy custard.
- RatafiasSmall crisp almond macaroons, sold in Britain as ratafia biscuits and roughly equivalent to Italian amaretti. Three ounces is about 85 g. Sponge cake, as the recipe allows, works but is blander; add a little almond extract if you want the original character.
- Rubbing the sugarDragging the whole orange over sugar lumps pulls the zest oils into the sugar, and many cooks prefer it to grating, which is more likely to catch pith. Any lump or cube sugar will do; make the total up to 4 oz, about 115 g.
- Puff paste at the edges onlyThe pastry is a decorative rim, not a lining, so the custard bakes directly against the dish. Press a 1-inch strip of bought all-butter puff around the moistened rim of a 8-9 inch pie-dish; it will brown well before the custard is done.
- NutmegA quarter of a small nutmeg is roughly 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon grated. Grate it fresh, since pre-ground loses the resinous note this pudding leans on.
- ServingThree or four portions, as stated. Best warm rather than hot, plain or with cold cream.
Orange puddings of this kind run back to the eighteenth-century English baked-custard tradition, in which citrus rind rubbed on loaf sugar was one common way of catching the oils. The distinguishing touch here is the ratafia: a small almond biscuit, generally said to take its name from the flavoured cordial, used crushed as a thickener and a flavouring at once, in trifles, charlottes and puddings such as this. The "probable cost, 1s. 2d." is characteristic of the house style, aimed at readers running a household to a budget who wanted to know what a dish would come to before they began.