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Souse Pudding
Take two eggs, with their weight in flour and sugar. Whisk the eggs with the sugar, and when the puddings are about to be put into the oven, add the flour. Beat the mixture till it is light, frothy, and perfectly smooth, put it into small buttered cups, and bake in a moderate oven. When done enough, turn the puddings out carefully, sift sugar over them, and serve. A little flavouring will be an agreeable addition. Time to bake, about twenty minutes.
A whisked sponge batter in miniature: eggs, their own weight in sugar and flour, no chemical raising agent and no fat in the batter itself. Everything depends on the air you beat into the eggs.
- Weigh the eggsTwo eggs in the shell come to roughly 3 1/2 to 4 oz (100-115 g), so use the same weight of caster sugar and the same again of plain flour. Weighing is not optional here; the whole method is a ratio.
- Whisk to the ribbonEggs and sugar should be beaten until pale, thick and holding a trail on the surface for a few seconds. This is the only leavening in the pudding, and with an electric whisk it will take several minutes.
- Read "beat" as "fold"The recipe puts the instruction to beat until light, frothy and smooth after the flour goes in, but modern practice is to sift the flour over the surface and fold with a spatula until just combined, so that the air worked into the eggs is not knocked out and the puddings do not bake dense.
- Add the flour at the last momentThe direction to hold back the flour until the puddings are about to go in the oven is deliberate. A whisked batter with flour in it deflates within minutes, so have the oven hot and the cups buttered first.
- Moderate oven350F (180C) for about twenty minutes. They are done when risen, golden and just springing back at the centre.
- Small buttered cupsDariole moulds, ramekins or a deep muffin tin, buttered well and dusted with a little flour or sugar so they turn out cleanly. Fill about two-thirds full.
- FlavouringThe period default would be grated lemon zest, a little vanilla, orange-flower water or a spoonful of brandy. Zest is best beaten in with the eggs and sugar; liquid flavourings go in just before the flour.
- Yield and servingAbout four to six small puddings, depending on the size of the cups. They are best within an hour of baking, warm, with sifted sugar and a fruit compote, jam sauce or custard.
The name is the puzzle. "Souse" in English cookery almost always means pickled meat or the pickling liquor itself, and it has no obvious connection to a sweet whisked sponge; the likeliest explanation is a corrupted or dialect title that Cassell's inherited from an earlier manuscript or regional source, though this is inference rather than documented fact. The pudding itself is entirely recognisable: the equal-weights whisked sponge, made without butter and without raising powder, that runs through nineteenth-century English baking under a dozen names, from Savoy and sponge biscuits to cup puddings. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled at the end of the Victorian period, was an alphabetical reference rather than a curated collection, so entries like this one survive with their odd inherited titles intact and their method reduced to a few brisk lines aimed at a cook who already knew what a whisked batter should look like.