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Queen Mab's Pudding
Put a pint and a half of new milk or cream into a saucepan with any flavouring that may be preferred--either an inch of stick cinnamon, the thin rind of a lemon, vanilla, or eight or nine bitter almonds, blanched or sliced. Simmer the liquor gently until it is pleasantly and rather strongly flavoured, then put with it a pinch of salt, four ounces of loaf sugar, and an ounce of isinglass or gelatine, and stir until the last is dissolved. Strain the mixture through muslin, and mix with it the well-beaten yolks of five eggs. Stir it again over the fire until it begins to thicken, but on no account allow it to boil, or it will curdle. Stir until it is cool, then mix with it an ounce and a half of candied peel and an ounce and a half of dried cherries--or, if preferred, preserved ginger or preserved pineapple may be used instead of the cherries, and a little of the juice of the fruit may be stirred in with the pudding. Pour the pudding into an oiled mould, and let it stand in a cool place, or upon ice, until set. Turn the pudding out very carefully, and pour round it a sauce made of clear syrup flavoured with lemonrind and coloured with cochineal, or, if preferred, mixed with a small portion of strawberry or currant acid. Time, about an hour to prepare the pudding. Sufficient for five or six persons. Probable cost, if made with milk and gelatine, 1s. 10d.
The obstacle here is the fourth flavouring option. Everything else in this pudding is a plain boiled custard set with gelatine, but the recipe as printed treats bitter almonds as interchangeable with cinnamon or vanilla, and they are not.
- Bitter almondsBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which enzymatic action converts to hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is crushed, sliced or steeped in warm liquid. Eight or nine of them infused into a pint and a half of milk that is then eaten cold, undiluted and unbaked is a genuinely uncontrolled dose; kernel potency varies widely between nuts and there is no way to judge it in a domestic kitchen. Their sale for eating is restricted in the United States and elsewhere for exactly this reason. Use a current recipe for a set custard rather than adapting this one.
- IsinglassA collagen setting agent made from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish, sold in sheets or shreds and once the standard jelly-stiffener. It is now largely a fining agent for beer and wine. The recipe already offers gelatine as the alternative, and the costing at the end assumes it.
- An ounce of gelatineThat is roughly four modern quarter-ounce envelopes to a pint and a half of liquid (about 30 imperial fluid ounces, nearer four cups than three), a very firm set by present standards; the pudding has to survive being turned out of a mould and sauced. Victorian gelatine may also have been less consistently refined than modern powder.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold as a hard cone or loaf, broken up with nippers and pounded as needed. Four ounces is about half a cup of granulated sugar by weight.
- CochinealA red colouring made from the dried bodies of scale insects, still in use as carmine or E120. It can cause allergic reactions in some people and must be named on labels in the United States, and it is not vegetarian, which is worth knowing when reading any Victorian pink sauce, icing or jelly.
- "Strawberry or currant acid"A thin fruit syrup sharpened with tartaric or citric acid, sold by chemists and grocers as a summer drink base. The nearest thing on a modern shelf is a good unsweetened fruit cordial or a reduced fruit syrup with lemon juice.
- Why the custard curdlesThe warning not to boil is the hinge of the method and applies to any egg-yolk custard: yolk proteins begin to set well below boiling, and once they tighten around each other the mixture breaks into curds rather than thickening smoothly. Straining before the yolks go in, as the recipe directs, takes out the cinnamon stick, rind or almonds so the pan can be watched.
- YieldFive or six servings, and the shilling-and-tenpence costing is a reminder that these books were written for a cook keeping household accounts.
Queen Mab is the fairy queen of Mercutio's speech in Romeo and Juliet, and "Queen Mab's pudding" appears in English cookery books of the second half of the nineteenth century for a moulded cream studded with candied fruit. Structurally it is a crème anglaise stiffened with isinglass or gelatine and turned out of a shape, part of the large family of Victorian moulded creams that includes the various charlottes and bavarois and depends entirely on a cold larder or a supply of ice. The point of the method is the stirred custard itself: the whole lesson is in the sentence about not letting it boil. The choice of flavourings on offer -- cinnamon stick, lemon peel, vanilla, bitter almonds -- and the casual inclusion of the last shows how little the period worried about a substance no modern kitchen should keep.