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Parliament Pudding
Whisk the yolks of seven and the whites of four eggs well, first separately and afterwards together. Boil half a pound of loaf sugar with a pint of water, skim it carefully. When it is a clear syrup, pour it over the eggs, add the strained juice of a large lemon, and the yellow part of half of it, which has been rubbed upon sugar and powdered. Beat the mixture for several minutes, and whilst beating shake in gradually half a pound of dried flour. Take care there are no lumps in the batter. Pour it into a buttered tin, and bake it in a well-heated oven till it is nicely set--say for about three quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A hot-syrup sponge rather than a pudding in the boiled, cloth-wrapped sense: the eggs are cooked and stabilised by boiling sugar syrup before any flour goes in, which is the same principle behind a pâte à bombe. Get the syrup right and the rest follows.
- The hinge: pour the syrup boiling hot, in a thin streamThe whole structure depends on hot syrup being beaten into the eggs so that they thicken and hold air. Pour it slowly down the side of the bowl with the whisk running; dumped in at once it scrambles the yolks.
- Reduce the syrup properlyHalf a pound of sugar (225 g) to an Imperial pint (20 fl oz / c. 570 ml) makes a thin syrup. "When it is a clear syrup" most likely means skimmed until it runs clear; the recipe names no stage or temperature. If your batter looks too slack to set, reducing the syrup a little before adding it is the remedy.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in a cone or block, broken up for use. Ordinary granulated is the direct substitute.
- Dried flourFlour spread on a tray and warmed in a cool oven, then sieved, to drive off damp and break up lumps. With modern packaged flour, simply sift it — twice, given the instruction to keep the batter smooth.
- Rubbing the zest on sugarA lump of sugar dragged over the lemon skin picks up the oil, then is crushed to powder. Finely grated zest rubbed into a spoonful of the sugar with your fingers does the same job.
- A well-heated ovenFor a sponge of this kind, 350–375F (180–190C). Three-quarters of an hour suits a deep tin; test with a skewer rather than trusting the clock.
- The tinNo size is given. Half a pound of flour and the foam from seven yolks and four whites wants a buttered tin of about 8 inches (20 cm), or a similar deep loaf tin, filled no more than two-thirds.
- Yield and servingFive or six, as stated. It is best eaten the day it is baked, warm, with cream or a lemon sauce; a syrup sponge with no fat in it stales quickly.
The name belongs to a small family of English baked goods — parliament cakes, parliament gingerbread — whose connection to the institution is generally traced to the thin gingerbread biscuits sold in the streets and reputedly eaten by members, though the link is traditional rather than documented. What the recipe really records is a technique: before chemical raising agents were universal in domestic baking, lift came from eggs alone, and cooking them with boiling syrup gave a foam more stable than whisked whites on their own. The separate whisking of yolks and whites, then their combination, is the method also used for Savoy and Naples biscuits. The costing of 1s. 2d. is characteristic of the book, which gave a probable cost for most dishes.