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Roseneath Puddings
Take two eggs, and their weight in flour, in butter, and in sugar. Beat the butter to cream, add the sugar, flour, and eggs, and any flavouring that may be preferred. Butter some small cups, three-parts fill them with the mixture, and bake in a moderate oven. Serve cold, with almonds sliced and cut into strips stuck into the puddings. Time, fifteen to twenty minutes. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A pound cake in miniature, scaled by the weight of the eggs rather than by cups. The method is sound; only the vessels and the oven need translating.
- Weigh the eggs firstTwo eggs in the shell will come to somewhere in the region of 4 oz (110-120 g) depending on their size, and you want that same weight of flour, butter and sugar each. Weigh them on a scale rather than guessing — the whole structure of the recipe depends on the four weights matching.
- Moderate oven350F (175C). Small cakes this size are done at 15-20 minutes, when a skewer comes out clean and the tops spring back.
- Small cupsDariole moulds, ramekins or a standard muffin tin. Butter them well and fill only three-quarters full as directed — there is no baking powder here, but the creamed butter still lifts the batter appreciably.
- The hinge is the creamingWith no chemical leavening, all the rise comes from air beaten into the butter and sugar. Beat until pale and visibly increased in volume. The original adds the sugar, then the flour, then the eggs; if you prefer the modern order, add the eggs a little at a time so the mixture does not curdle and fold the flour in last.
- FlavouringThe recipe leaves it open. Grated lemon rind, vanilla or a spoonful of brandy would all suit. Add it with the eggs.
- AlmondsBlanched almonds cut lengthwise into spikes, pressed into the cooled puddings so they stand up like a hedgehog's quills. Toasting them lightly first improves the flavour.
- YieldThree or four servings as written — about six small moulds. Doubling works without adjustment beyond a little extra baking time if the moulds are larger.
The recipe belongs to the family of cakes built by weight rather than measure — the French *quatre-quarts*, the English pound cake — with the refinement that the eggs themselves supply the reference weight, a trick that guarantees the proportions balance whatever size the eggs happen to be. Cassell's ran dozens of these small baked puddings under place names: Roseneath is generally taken to refer to Rosneath on the Gare Loch in Dunbartonshire, though no source in the period explains the connection, and such names were often attached by cooks or publishers to distinguish otherwise near-identical batters. What marks the dish as Victorian is less the mixture than the presentation: served cold, in individual moulds, bristling with almond spikes, it belongs to a table where a plate of small sweets in matching shapes counted for more than novelty of flavour.