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PORK PUDDING (a Dutch recipe)
Put half a pound of finely-grated bread-crumbs into a bowl. Pour over these three-quarters of a pint of milk which has been mixed with two well-beaten eggs, and let them soak for an hour. Stir in with them two pounds of lean pork finely minced and seasoned with pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish, and bake in a moderate oven. Add a little more butter to the sides of the dish, if required. Time to bake, two hours. Probable cost, 2s. 3d. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A baked pork loaf built on a panade of soaked crumbs — closer to a terrine than to a boiled English pudding. Two points decide the outcome: the fat content of the pork and the internal temperature at the end.
- Oven temperature"A moderate oven" is given no figure in the book; it is usually read today as somewhere around 350F (175C). Two hours at that heat suits the depth of mixture, but the loaf is done when the centre reaches 160F (71C), which may happen sooner in a shallow dish.
- MeasuresThree-quarters of an imperial pint is 15 fl oz, or a scant 2 US cups. Half a pound of finely grated crumbs is a large volume — roughly 4 cups of fresh crumbs, or about 2 cups if you use dry ones, in which case the milk will be absorbed faster than the stated hour.
- "Lean pork" is a trapModern pork is bred far leaner than Victorian pork, and two pounds of genuinely lean mince will bake dry and crumbly. Shoulder mince at around 20 percent fat gives the texture the recipe assumes.
- The soak mattersThe full hour lets the crumbs swell and hold the egg and milk in suspension; skipping it leaves the pudding weeping liquid into the dish. Mince the pork while the panade sits.
- Dish and butterA buttered 2-quart baking dish or a large loaf tin. The instruction to add "a little more butter to the sides" is about preventing the edges drying and catching — a loose cover of foil for the first 90 minutes does the same job, removed at the end to colour the top.
- SeasoningNo quantities are given. For two pounds of meat, about 2 teaspoons salt, a teaspoon of pepper and a quarter teaspoon of grated nutmeg is in keeping; nutmeg with pork is deliberate here, not decorative.
- ServingSix or seven portions, as stated. Let it stand 15 minutes before cutting or the slices break. Good hot with mustard and potatoes, and better cold the next day, when it firms into something sliceable.
Cassell's collected recipes from across Europe and labelled them loosely by nationality, and this "Dutch" pudding belongs to the broad northern family of meat loaves bound with a bread-and-milk panade — the same method underlies German Hackbraten, Scandinavian meatballs and the English forcemeat. Soaked crumbs stretch expensive meat and keep it tender, which is why the technique turns up wherever thrift and butchery meet. The word pudding here carries its older, savoury sense: in Victorian usage a pudding was anything of a soft bound consistency cooked in a dish or cloth, sweet or not. The costing of 2s. 3d. for six or seven people is characteristic of the book, which was aimed at mistresses of modest households who had to answer for the week's expenditure.