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WHITE PUDDINGS (another way) (Cut into slices half a pound)
Cut into slices half a pound of the flesh of a cold roast fowl, then mince it finely, and mix with it four ounces of the inner fat of the pig also minced. Boil a quarter of a pint of bread-crumbs in half a pint of milk till they form a thick paste; skin and chop small one large onion, dissolve two ounces of fresh butter in a stewpan, put in the onion and the minced meat, cover the stewpan closely, and let its contents stew gently till the onions are tender; add the soaked bread-crumbs, season the mixture with pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg, and bind together with the yolks of three eggs; stir the mixture over the fire briskly for five minutes. Clean some skins thoroughly, three-parts fill them with the mixture, tie them firmly in links about six inches in length, and put them into a saucepan with plenty of water, hot but not boiling; bring the water to the boil, then simmer the puddings for ten minutes. Drain them, and hang them in a cool situation till wanted. Before using them, cover with buttered paper, and broil over a clear fire; serve very hot on a dish covered with a napkin. If more convenient, the flesh of roast pheasants, partridges, hares; or veal, may be used instead of roast fowl. Time, about twenty-five minutes to broil the puddings.
A Victorian boudin blanc built from leftover roast bird, panade and pork fat. The critical rule is temperature: this mixture is bound with egg yolk and enclosed in a natural casing, and any hard boil will split the skins and curdle the filling.
- Never let it boil hardThe water goes in hot, comes just to a boil, then drops to a bare simmer for the ten minutes. Rolling water bursts the casings and squeezes the fat out through the splits.
- Imperial measuresThe book uses the 20 fl oz pint, so half a pint of milk is about 1¼ US cups and a quarter-pint of crumbs is about ⅔ cup, loosely packed. Cook the crumbs and milk to a stiff paste that holds its shape on the spoon.
- Inner fat of the pigThis is leaf or flare fat, the soft kidney fat, mild and very white. Ask a butcher; unrendered back fat is the usual substitute, and 4 oz to 8 oz of meat is a normal sausage ratio, not an extravagance.
- SkinsHog casings, sold salted. Rinse well, soak in cool water half an hour, and flush the interiors before filling. "Three-parts fill" is literal — the panade swells and a tightly packed link will split.
- Cooked meat, so watch the second cookingThe fowl is already roasted and the filling is only briefly poached. When you grill them, the aim is to heat right through to 165F/74C at the centre rather than simply to colour the outside.
- Storage, not "a cool situation"A cold larder is not a refrigerator. Chill the poached puddings quickly and keep them at fridge temperature, using them within two days, or freeze them once cold.
- Buttered paperBaking parchment brushed with butter does the job the original intends: it keeps the skins from blackening and blistering over direct heat. Under a domestic broiler, medium heat and frequent turning; the original allows about twenty-five minutes.
- YieldRoughly 1½ lb of filling, making six to eight links of the specified six inches — four to six as a supper dish with mustard and mashed potato.
White puddings are the bloodless half of the old pudding-making pair: black pudding carries the pig's blood, white pudding the fat, cereal and seasoning alone. In Scotland and Ireland the white pudding of the butcher's shop is oatmeal-based, but the version Cassell's gives here belongs to the French tradition of boudin blanc — pale meat, a milk-and-crumb panade, egg yolk to bind, and nutmeg, a spicing generally traced to the medieval taste for warm spice in delicate white dishes. Its place in a late-Victorian household dictionary is a matter of economy as much as refinement: it is a way of turning the remains of a roast fowl, a pheasant or a hare into something that looks deliberate rather than reheated, and the alternatives listed at the end make that plain. Sausage-making at home was still ordinary work, casings bought from the butcher along with the fat, and the finished links hung in a cold larder.