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RATAFIA PUDDING, BAKED (another way)
Crush four ounces of ratafias to powder. Mix with them two ounces of sweet almonds blanched and pounded, a pint of cream, the yolks of six and the whites of two eggs, a table-spoonful of sugar, and a glassful of brandy or sherry. Line a dish with puff-paste, pour in the mixture, and bake in a well-heated oven. Serve hot or cold. Time to bake, about three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, exclusive of the wine, 3s.
This is a baked almond custard in a pastry case, thickened as much by crushed macaroon crumbs as by egg. The measurements are Victorian and the oven direction needs a number.
- RatafiasRatafia biscuits are small, hard, dry almond macaroons, once flavoured with bitter almond. Italian amaretti, especially the crisp amaretti di Saronno type, are the closest current equivalent; 4 oz is about 115 g, crushed to fine crumbs in a bag with a rolling pin or a few pulses in a processor.
- The pint of creamAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so about 2 1/2 US cups. Single or whipping cream both work; the higher the fat, the softer and richer the set.
- "A glassful"A Victorian wine glass is roughly 2 fl oz (60 ml). More than that and the custard will struggle to set.
- Oven temperature"Well-heated" is a relative direction with no number behind it; it is usually read as somewhere around 400F, hot enough to set puff pastry, but a cream and egg custard held that hot for 45 minutes will curdle. Start hot to set the pastry, then drop to 325-340F for the remainder.
- Blind bake the caseThe recipe simply lines the dish and pours the liquid in. A modern cook will get a far better result baking the puff-paste shell with weights for 15 minutes first, since the wet mixture otherwise soaks the base.
- Knowing when it is doneThe custard is set when the centre still wobbles slightly and an instant-read thermometer shows about 175F. Baking until the middle is firm gives a grainy, weeping filling.
- The whitesSix yolks to two whites reads as a choice for richness: the extra yolks enrich, while too much white would make the custard rubbery. Do not substitute whole eggs.
- YieldEnough for a 9-inch tart, serving six to eight. The cost note of 3s belongs to the book's own period and is of no use to a modern cook.
Ratafia was originally a flavoured cordial, and the name carried over to the small bitter-almond macaroons served alongside it, which by the nineteenth century had become a staple of the English store cupboard: they were crushed into trifles, pressed round the sides of charlottes, and used, as here, to thicken and perfume a baked custard. The pairing with sweet almonds and a glass of brandy or sherry places this squarely in the tradition of the rich almond "cheesecakes" and puddings of eighteenth-century English cookery, which Cassell's inherited and tidied into short paragraphs. That the book gives a second version at all suggests how routine such a pudding was in a middle-class kitchen with cream, eggs and a good supply of biscuits to hand.