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RUSK PUDDING (another way)
Sweeten a pint of milk, and flavour it with lemon-rind or cinnamon. Arrange three or four rusks in a buttered basin, and pour the milk over them; let them soak for half an hour. Whisk two eggs, and beat them up with the rusks; then add a pinch of salt and a slice of fresh butter. Lay a buttered paper over the basin, which must be quite full, tie it in a floured cloth, and plunge it into fast-boiling water. Boil it quickly until done enough. Move it about two or three times during the first half of boiling. When done enough, turn it upon a hot dish, and serve with sweet sauce or wine sauce. If liked, candied peel, stoned raisins, or washed currants may be mixed with the pudding. Time to boil, an hour and a half. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A boiled basin pudding of the plain Victorian sort, held together by two eggs and soaked bread. The points below cover the vessels, the cloth, and the one thing that decides whether it turns out as custard or as scrambled egg.
- RusksNot a modern teething biscuit but twice-baked sweet bread rolls, dry and pale. Holland rusks or zwieback are the closest supermarket equivalents; three or four of them is roughly 3-4 oz of dry bread. Stale brioche or challah, sliced and dried in a low oven, works as well.
- The pintCassell's is British, so this is an imperial pint of 20 fl oz, about 2½ US cups. With two eggs that is a loose custard, which is why the soaked rusks are needed to give it body.
- The basinA pudding basin is a steep-sided ceramic bowl; for this quantity one of about 1½ pints. Butter it well and fill it right to the rim as instructed, or the pudding cooks unevenly and slumps when turned out.
- Covering itButtered paper plus a floured cloth tied under the rim is the period seal. A doubled sheet of parchment and a sheet of foil, pleated across the middle and tied with string, does the same job and keeps water out. A snug lid alone is not enough if the basin is full.
- Boiling versus steamingPlunged into fast-boiling water, which should be topped up from the kettle as it falls. A gentle simmer with the basin on a trivet is kinder to an egg mixture than a hard rolling boil, which can curdle the edges before the centre sets.
- TimingAn hour and a half is the recipe's own time; a small basin may set sooner. Test at an hour: a skewer into the middle should come out clean and the pudding should feel just firm, not rubbery. Letting it stand a few minutes before turning out may help it hold together.
- Sweet sauce or wine sauceSweet sauce here likely means a sweetened thin pouring sauce; wine sauce the same flavoured with sherry or Madeira. Either is thin enough to pour, not a custard.
- Yield and costFive or six servings, as stated. The 10d costing is a survival of a period when cookbooks priced every dish for household accounting; it is of no use as a modern figure.
Rusk puddings belong to the large Victorian family of dishes built on dried bread — bread-and-butter pudding, cabinet pudding, brown bread pudding — all of which exist because bread was the cheapest bulk in the larder and because nothing was thrown away. Rusks, bread baked once as rolls and then sliced and baked again until dry, kept for weeks in a tin and were sold by grocers and bakers as a staple; they were also standard invalid and nursery food, softened in warm milk. Boiling a pudding in a cloth-tied basin rather than baking it was the older method, dating from the era when a pot hung over the fire was more reliable than an oven, and it survived well into the age of the kitchen range because it needed no oven space on a day when the range was busy. The instruction to move the basin about during the first half of boiling is a practical detail from that world, though the recipe gives no reason for it; it is often said to stop the pudding sticking to the side nearest the heat.