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Savoury Pudding
Beat up a table-spoonful of cornflour with a little cold water to a very smooth paste, and add to it the yolks of two eggs and the white of one, well beaten. Add half a pint of beef-tea, cold, and free from fat. Mix the whole well with a table-spoonful of fine bread-crumbs, and leave it to stand for a short time. Put into a basin, and steam for about half an hour. This may be served either hot or cold.
A steamed savoury custard set with beef broth rather than milk — a small dish from the invalid-cookery tradition, and it works only if the steam is kept gentle.
- Keep the water at a bare simmerThis is an egg custard: hard boiling water will curdle it and leave weeping pockets of broth. Hold the water in the outer pan just below a simmer for the full half hour, and test with a skewer that comes out clean.
- Cornflour is cornstarchBritish cornflour is American cornstarch, not cornmeal and not fine wheat flour. Slaking it with cold water first, as directed, is what keeps it from seizing into lumps when it meets the eggs.
- Half a pint, imperialCassell's is a British book, so half an imperial pint is 10 fl oz, or 1¼ US cups. The proportion of three egg parts to 10 oz of liquid is deliberately soft; it will just hold a shape.
- Beef-teaThe Victorian invalid staple: lean beef steeped in water at low heat and strained, thin and clear rather than a reduced stock. A good unsalted beef broth or consomme stands in, but skim it thoroughly, as the recipe directs it be "free from fat".
- A basin means a pudding basinA round ceramic bowl with sloping sides, buttered, standing on a trivet or folded cloth in a covered pan of water reaching halfway up. The recipe does not say so, but cover the top with buttered paper or foil so condensation does not drip in and dilute the custard.
- Season itThe recipe calls for no seasoning whatever, presumably relying on the beef-tea. For the table it needs salt, pepper, and a scrape of nutmeg or a little mace.
- YieldAbout 1½ cups of mixture — one substantial invalid portion, or two small savoury servings. Halve the steaming time if you divide it among individual ramekins.
Savoury puddings of this kind belong to the large body of nineteenth-century "cookery for the sick", which Cassell's appears to treat as a branch of the principles of cookery rather than an afterthought. Beef-tea was the central medicine-food of the period, prescribed for fevers, convalescence and childbirth alike, on the then-current belief that its extractives carried the nourishing essence of the meat; later analysis showed it to be thin in protein, which is roughly why recipes like this one bind it with egg and crumbs into something more sustaining. Steaming in a basin is generally said to have been a gentle method suited to a coal range where oven heat was hard to regulate, and the recipe notes that the dish can be served hot or cold.