Home › The Principles of Cookery › Puff Puddings
Puff Puddings
Beat four ounces of butter to a cream, and mix with it four table-spoonfuls of flour, the yolks of four eggs, two table-spoonfuls of sugar, a pint of cream or milk, and a little almond flavouring. A minute or two before the puddings are to be baked, add the whites of the eggs, beaten to a firm froth. Butter some large patty-pans, and three-parts fill them with the mixture. If liked, a few currants may be sprinkled over the puddings. Bake in a well-heated oven, and serve the puddings as soon as they are done enough, with white sugar sifted over them; send wine sauce to table with them. Time to bake, half an hour. Probable cost, if made with milk, 1s. 2d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
This is a batter pudding raised by whipped egg white rather than any chemical leaven, baked in individual tins and eaten the moment it leaves the oven. Everything else is negotiable; the timing of the whites is not.
- Fold the whites at the last momentThe recipe says a minute or two before baking, and it means it. Have the tins buttered and the oven at temperature before the whites go in, then fill and bake immediately or the froth deflates and you get a dense custard.
- MeasuresFour ounces of butter is half a cup (1 stick). A British pint is 20 imperial fl oz (568 ml), so a little under 2.5 US cups of milk or cream. Four tablespoonfuls of flour makes a very thin batter — that is correct here, closer to a popover than a cake.
- Patty-pansNineteenth-century patty-pans were small tins for individual pastries, in a range of sizes and depths; this recipe asks for large ones. A standard muffin tin or a set of dariole moulds works; the batter is loose, so deeper cups hold their shape better than shallow ones.
- Oven heatThe book gives no temperatures; 'well-heated' means a hot oven, and something around 400F is a reasonable modern reading. The high heat is what sets the outside while the interior puffs.
- Baking timeHalf an hour suits fairly large tins. In a standard 12-cup muffin tin, check at 18-20 minutes — they should be risen, browned and just firm at the centre.
- Almond flavouringUse about half a teaspoon of almond extract. Victorian "almond flavouring" often meant bitter almond essence, which was far stronger and, in its unrectified form, unsafe; modern extract is not the same thing and should not be increased to compensate.
- Wine sauceThe accompanying sauce is a sweet one: butter, sugar and a fortified wine such as sherry or madeira, warmed and thickened slightly. Make it while the puddings bake, since they will not wait.
- Yield and servingFive or six people, so eight to ten small puddings. They fall within a few minutes of coming out — dust with sugar and carry them straight to the table.
Cassell's places this among a long family of Victorian "puff" and batter puddings, all built on the same idea: a thin egg batter lightened with whipped whites, baked hot in small tins so that steam and expanding air do the raising work before the structure sets. It belongs to the same technical family as Yorkshire pudding and the popover, but sweetened and enriched with cream. The costing — 1s. 2d. for five or six people — is typical of the book, which gives a probable cost for each dish and offers the choice between cream and milk. The optional currants and the sifted sugar are the sort of small finishing touches that separated a dinner-table pudding from a plain one, as does the wine sauce, sweet fortified-wine sauces having long been served with English boiled and baked puddings.