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Speaker's Pudding
Butter a plain mould thickly, dredge flour upon it, and arrange some raisins in even rounds on the inside; line it with thin strips of crumb of bread which have been dried before the fire and well buttered. After lining, fill the mould with alternate layers of raisins, sugar, and strips of bread, and let the topmost layer be of bread. Mix the well beaten yolks of four eggs with a pint of milk, add sugar and flavouring, and pour the custard upon the bread. Let it soak for two hours. Bake or steam the pudding, and when done enough turn it out carefully upon a hot dish, and send sweet sauce to table with it. Time to bake the pudding, about an hour; to steam it, an hour and a half. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A moulded bread-and-butter pudding, turned out rather than served from the dish. The lining is what makes it, and it is also where it goes wrong.
- The hinge: dry the bread firstThe strips of crumb are dried before the fire so they hold their shape and take butter without going pasty. A low oven, around 300F for about ten minutes, will serve the same purpose. Fresh soft bread is likely to collapse into the custard, and the pudding may not turn out cleanly.
- Butter, flour, then patternButter the mould heavily, dust with flour, then press the raisins into the prepared surface in rings before any bread goes in. They form the decoration on the outside once inverted, so space them evenly.
- A pint of milkAn imperial pint, 20 fl oz or about 570 ml. With four yolks this is a soft, loose custard by modern standards; it sets adequately because the bread absorbs it, but do not slacken it further.
- FlavouringCassell leaves it open. Grated nutmeg, lemon zest, or a little brandy are the period choices; vanilla extract works and would have been understood as vanilla essence.
- The two-hour soakNot optional. The custard needs to penetrate the dried bread all the way through or the centre bakes dry while the outside overcooks. Cover and soak in the refrigerator rather than at room temperature.
- Oven and water bathThe recipe gives no temperature; a moderate oven of roughly 325-350F suits it. Setting the mould in a roasting tin of hot water reaching halfway up the sides is a useful precaution, as an egg custard baked dry in a metal mould can curdle at the edges before the middle sets. About an hour, as stated, until a knife near the centre comes out clean.
- SteamingCover the mould tightly with buttered paper or foil, stand it on a trivet in a pan of gently simmering water reaching two-thirds up, and keep it at a bare simmer for 90 minutes. Top up with boiling water as needed.
- Turning outRest 10 to 15 minutes before inverting, or the pudding will slump. Run a thin knife round the rim, invert onto a warmed dish, and lift the mould straight up.
- Sauce and yield"Sweet sauce" here means a sweetened white sauce or a custard sauce, often with brandy or lemon. Serves five or six, as stated.
Moulded bread puddings of this kind sit between two English traditions: the thrifty bread-and-butter pudding of the eighteenth-century household book, and the ornamental turned-out puddings that Victorian cooks produced in tinned charlotte and dariole moulds. The pattern of raisins pressed into the buttered mould is pure presentation, the same trick used for cabinet pudding, and it is the reason the pudding is baked in a shape rather than a dish. The name is one of Cassell's many dedicatory titles rather than a documented invention; nineteenth-century compilers routinely attached the names of offices and public figures to standard puddings, and no particular Speaker of the House has ever been securely connected with this one. The costing of 1s. 4d. and the note that it feeds five or six are typical of the dictionary's method, which assumed a reader budgeting a household's meals rather than choosing a dish for pleasure.