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West Indian Pudding
Take a quarter of a pound of stale sponge biscuits, crumble them into a bowl, and pour upon them half a pint of boiling cream nicely sweetened. Let them soak for an hour. Beat the mixture with a fork, and add three well-beaten eggs. Butter a small pudding-mould. Line it with preserved ginger cut into thin slices, and fill it with the pudding, placed gently into it by spoonfuls so as not to disturb the ginger. Cover it, and tie securely in a cloth. Put it in a saucepan upon a plate turned upside down, surround it with about three inches of boiling water, and keep the water boiling. When done enough, turn it out, and serve with the syrup from the ginger made hot, and poured over it. Probable cost, 1s. 8d. Sufficient for three or four persons. Time, three-quarters of an hour to one hour to steam the pudding.
A steamed custard pudding of the late Victorian type, simple once the vessel and the steaming setup are sorted out.
- Quantities in modern termsA quarter pound of sponge biscuits is 4 oz (about 115 g) — trifle sponges, ladyfingers or savoiardi all work. Half a pint in an English book of this period is 10 fl oz, so use 1 1/4 cups of cream.
- The mouldThe recipe gives no size; the volume of the mixture (10 fl oz cream, 4 oz of soaked crumbs and three eggs) suggests something in the 1 1/2-pint range rather than a true small basin. A ceramic pudding basin, a metal charlotte mould or a heatproof bowl of that sort of capacity all serve; butter it thoroughly or the ginger lining will stick and tear on turning out.
- Preserved ginger and its syrupThis means stem ginger in heavy syrup, sold in jars — not crystallised ginger, which has no syrup to pour over as the recipe requires. One small jar is more than enough for lining and sauce.
- Why the upturned plateIt keeps the basin off the direct heat of the pan bottom so the custard sets gently rather than curdling against hot metal. A folded cloth or a metal trivet does the same job.
- Covering itThe cloth-and-string method still works, but a round of buttered parchment topped with foil, pleated to allow rise and tied under the rim, is easier and keeps condensation out.
- Water level and timingThe original says to surround it with about three inches of boiling water and to keep the water boiling; a steady simmer is easier to manage in a modern pan, and top up from a kettle as it evaporates. Forty-five minutes to an hour is right; the pudding is done when a skewer to the centre comes out clean and the top feels just set, not firm.
- Resting before turning outLet the basin stand five minutes off the heat. Turning out immediately tends to shear the ginger slices away from the sides.
- YieldThree or four, as the original says — modest portions by current standards. It can be doubled in a correspondingly larger basin, with the steaming time extended accordingly.
The name says less about the Caribbean than about the ginger: preserved stem ginger in syrup reached British kitchens through colonial trade, with Jamaica and China both supplying the market, and by the later nineteenth century a jar of it was a familiar store-cupboard luxury. The book uses a geographical name loosely, as a shorthand for a single characteristic ingredient — "West Indian" here means ginger and syrup, much as "Indian" pudding in American books means cornmeal. The construction itself is thoroughly English: a steamed sponge-and-custard pudding built on stale biscuits, part of the wider Victorian habit of turning leftover cake and bread into a second dish rather than throwing it out.