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Victoria Pudding
Boil a little piece of stick vanilla in a pint of milk till it is pleasantly flavoured, strain it upon six ounces of finely-grated bread-crumbs, and add three table-spoonfuls of sugar, one table-spoonful of brandy, and three well-beaten eggs. Butter a mould thickly, flour it, and ornament tastefully with dried cherries, slices of preserved citron, or stoned raisins. Pour in the pudding quite cold, put a plate upon it, and steam it over boiling water. Let it stand two or three minutes, turn it upon a hot dish, and serve with Victoria sauce, or with melted red currant jelly poured round it. Time to steam the pudding, one hour and a quarter. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A steamed bread-crumb custard set in a decorated mould — closer to a delicate baked custard than to the dense suet puddings of the same era. Two things decide whether it works: the batter must go into the mould cold, and the steam must stay gentle.
- Cold batter, or the pattern slidesThe cherries, citron and raisins are pressed against the buttered and floured mould and held there only by the flour coating. Warm custard poured over them loosens the butter and they drift to the bottom. Chill the milk-and-crumb mixture thoroughly before it goes in.
- Imperial pintA pint here is 20 fl oz, so 2½ US cups of milk. Six ounces of fine fresh crumbs is roughly 3 cups loosely packed, or about 3 cups from a day-old white loaf grated on the fine side of a box grater.
- Stick vanillaA vanilla pod. Split it lengthways before it goes into the milk so the seeds release, simmer very gently for five to ten minutes, then leave it to steep off the heat before straining. Extract is not a like-for-like swap, but ½ teaspoon stirred in after the milk has cooled will do.
- Mould sizeThe mixture comes to roughly 1½ pints. Use a 1½ to 2 pint (about 1 litre) pudding basin or charlotte mould so there is a little headroom; the eggs give it some lift.
- The plate on topThat is the period's lid, and it works — it keeps condensation off the surface. A round of buttered parchment under a sheet of foil, tied with string, does the same and is easier to lift. Do not seal it airtight.
- Steaming, not boilingStand the mould on a trivet or folded cloth in a deep pan. The recipe has it steam over boiling water rather than sit in it, so keep the water below the base of the mould and at a steady rather than violent boil. A hard, splashing boil curdles an egg custard of this kind and gives it a honeycombed, weeping texture. Top up with boiling water as it drops.
- Testing at an hour and a quarterIt is done when a skewer to the centre comes out clean and the pudding feels set but still trembles slightly. The stated 75 minutes is about right for a 1½ pint mould; a wider, shallower one will be ready sooner.
- Victoria sauceCassell's gives it as a separate entry; it is a sweet dessert sauce, though the recipe here does not state its makeup. The alternative the recipe itself names is simpler: red currant jelly warmed with a spoonful of water until it pours.
- YieldFour or five as the book says, which is generous by modern standards; six small servings is realistic.
Steamed puddings named for the reigning queen were everywhere in later nineteenth-century cookery — Victoria puddings, Victoria sandwiches, Victoria sauce — and the name is often said to have signalled something fine rather than a specific formula, much as "royal" or "Windsor" arguably did. What is being made here is an economical dish dressed up: grated stale bread does the work that ground almonds or sponge might do in a costlier pudding, and the whole effect depends on the ornamented mould, a piece of Victorian kitchen theatre in which dried cherries and slices of candied citron are laid out in a pattern against the buttered tin and revealed only when the pudding is turned out. Cassell's quotes the probable cost at one shilling for four or five people, which places it among the affordable company dishes the Dictionary was assembled to supply to middle-class households cooking without a professional chef.