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Venetian Pudding
Make a custard of half a pint of milk, one gill of cream, the yolks of four eggs and the white of one. Put it into a jug, and place this in a large saucepan of cold water, which must be put on the fire until the custard thickens, stirring it all the time. Take it from the fire, and add a table-spoonful each of brandy and maraschino. Put a thin layer of pale lemon jelly at the bottom of a mould, and ornament with any pink crystallised fruit, such as sliced cherries. Cut two penny spongecakes into slices, spread a little jam between them, and place them in the mould. Add to the custard half an ounce of sheet gelatine, previously dissolved in a little milk. Strain the custard over the cake, and see that it is quite cool or it will melt the jelly. Then set the mould in a cold place until the pudding is firm enough to turn out. Probable cost, 2s.
A chilled moulded custard from the late Victorian repertoire, built in layers: jelly, sponge, then a gelatine-set custard. The whole thing succeeds or fails on temperature control at two separate moments.
- The hinge: pour the custard coldThe original says it plainly and it is the one instruction that ruins the pudding if ignored. Warm custard will melt the set lemon jelly at the base and muddy the decoration. Cool the gelatine-enriched custard to barely tepid, thick but still pourable, before it goes into the mould.
- Gill and pintCassell's is a British book, so a gill is 5 fl oz and half a pint is 10 fl oz. Read the custard base as 10 fl oz milk to 5 fl oz cream, about 1 1/4 cups and 2/3 cup.
- The jug in cold waterThis is a Victorian bain-marie: the jug of custard sits in a pan of cold water that is then brought up to heat, so the custard warms gradually and cannot catch. A heatproof jug or bowl over simmering water does the same job. Stir constantly and pull it off when it coats a spoon, around 180F.
- Sheet gelatine is not comparableHalf an ounce of Victorian sheet gelatine cannot be converted reliably to modern leaves, which vary by bloom strength and weigh only 1.5-3 g each. Work from the setting strength given on your own packet for roughly 1 pint of liquid, and err toward a soft set rather than rubber.
- Penny spongecakesSmall, cheap sponge cakes of the kind still sold as trifle sponges; dry finger biscuits (boudoir biscuits, ladyfingers) are the nearest supermarket substitute, though the size and weight of the originals cannot be pinned down.
- MaraschinoThe recipe means the clear, dry cherry-stone liqueur, not the sweet red syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Luxardo or a similar maraschino gives the almond-bitter note the custard is built around; kirsch is a reasonable stand-in.
- Pale lemon jellyA thin layer of lemon-flavoured gelatine, set firm in the bottom of the mould before anything else goes in. Set it in the refrigerator, arrange the crystallised fruit on the surface while it is still tacky, then chill again so the pieces stay in place.
- Yield and turning outThe quantities suggest a mould of roughly 1 1/2 pints, serving perhaps four to six. Chill until quite firm, then dip the mould in hot water for a few seconds and invert onto a wetted plate so the pudding can be slid into position.
- Probable costTwo shillings was the estimate for the whole pudding, with the brandy and maraschino the likeliest source of the expense.
Cassell's assigns a great many moulded creams and custards to foreign cities, and the names may well signal a flavouring rather than any traceable dish: here the likely tell is the maraschino, distilled from marasca cherries around Zara on the Dalmatian coast, a territory held by the Venetian Republic for centuries and a liqueur that reached British sideboards as a luxury import through the same trade routes. Puddings of this kind were arguably made practical by two nineteenth-century developments — reliable commercial sheet gelatine, which replaced the laborious boiling of calves' feet, and the ice trade that made a genuinely cold larder possible in an ordinary house. The layered construction, with jelly and crystallised fruit forming a pattern on what becomes the top, belongs to the same taste for architectural dessert work that filled the plates of Victorian dinner-table plans, and the inclusion of shop-bought penny sponges shows how far ready-made goods had already entered even a showpiece sweet.