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Saxon Pudding
According to high authority this is one of the best puddings of Germany. Boil a gill of milk, put into a stewpan half a pound of flour. Gradually dilute the flour with the milk, so as to obtain a fine smooth paste. Add four ounces of butter, and salt to taste. Place the saucepan on a moderate fire, stir the preparation till it begins to thicken, then take it off the fire, but still continue working it. When the paste is smooth, place it again on the fire, working it still, and gradually introduce into it the yolks of ten eggs, four ounces of oranged sugar, four ounces of butter, and a little salt. When the preparation is frothy, introduce seven or eight whipped whites of eggs. Pour the preparation into a dome or a cylinder mould which has been buttered and glazed with sugar and potato-flour. Set the mould in a stewpan with boiling water reaching to half its height. Bake in a slack oven for forty minutes.
This is a choux-type panade enriched with butter and ten yolks, lightened with whipped whites and steamed-baked in a water bath — closer to a hot souffl o The The proportions read strangely until you recognise the method.
- The hingeThe flour paste must be dried out properly on the heat, then cooled slightly before the yolks go in, or they will scramble into threads. Beat the yolks in one or two at a time off direct heat, returning the pan only briefly to keep the mixture warm and workable.
- A gill of milkAn imperial gill is 5 fl oz (about 140 ml); an American gill is 4 fl oz. Either way it is a very small amount of liquid for half a pound of flour — the butter, the eggs and the residual moisture do the rest. Expect a stiff paste, not a batter.
- Butter twiceFour ounces goes into the paste and another four ounces later with the yolks, so 8 oz (225 g) in total. This is not a misprint; the second addition is what makes the mixture rich enough to rise and set like a souffl o.
- Oranged sugarSugar flavoured with orange — traditionally made by rubbing lump sugar hard against the skin of an orange until it takes up the coloured oil, then crushing it. The zest of one or two oranges rubbed into 4 oz of caster sugar gives the same effect.
- Potato-flourPotato starch, sold as potato flour or fecule. It is used here with the sugar to line the buttered mould so the pudding releases cleanly; cornflour will do the same job.
- A slack ovenAbout 300 o o 325 oF (150 o o 160 oC). The water bath keeps the outside gentle while the centre sets, so resist raising the heat to speed things along o a hot oven will curdle the eggs and blow the top.
- The bain-marie"A stewpan with boiling water reaching to half its height" is a water bath that goes into the oven, not onto the stovetop. Use a roasting tin, and top up with boiling water if it drops during the forty minutes.
- Mould size and yieldThe recipe gives neither. With half a pound of flour and ten eggs, a mould of around 2 quarts (2 litres) filled no more than three-quarters is a reasonable estimate, serving eight to ten. Turn it out and serve it hot; built on a flour panade it is steadier than a true soufflé, but it will still sink as it cools.
Cassell's is quoting, without naming him, one of the great French professional manuals — the phrasing ("oranged sugar", potato-flour glazing, the mould set in boiling water) is the vocabulary common to the French manuals translated into English through the 1860s and 70s and quarried freely by later compilers. The dish itself is often said to belong to the German family of hot baked puddings known as Auflauf; French kitchens seem to have absorbed the idea and rebuilt it on a pâte à choux base, which is what this recipe actually is. That hybrid pedigree is typical of the late-Victorian English dictionary of cookery: a German name, a French method, and an English editor assuring the reader on "high authority" that it is worth the trouble. The water bath and the slack oven suggest that this was written for a coal range, where gentle, even heat had to be engineered rather than dialled in.