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Sponge Pudding (One-quarter cup of sugar)
One-quarter cup of sugar, one-quarter cup of butter, one-half cup of flour, five eggs, one pint of boiled milk. Mix the sugar and flour; wet with a little cold milk, and stir into the boiling milk. Cook until it thickens; add butter and the beaten yolks; then the whites, beaten stiff. whites, beaten stiff. Bake in cups or shallow dishes; place dish in hot water in oven. Serve with a creamy sauce.
Sauce-One-half cup of butter, one cup of powdered sugar, onequarter cup of cream; flavor with wine or vanilla. Beat butter to cream, add sugar and flavoring, and then the cream. Place bowl in hot water and stir until creamy.
— Mrs. Michael Schubert
A flour-thickened milk base enriched with yolks and lifted with beaten whites — in modern terms a baked soufflé pudding, and it behaves like one. The original assumes you know how to fold and how hot a moderate oven is; here are the numbers.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirThe whites go into a hot, heavy panada, and everything the pudding does depends on keeping the air in them. Let the thickened base cool to warm, stir in a third of the whites to loosen it, then fold in the rest with a spatula until barely combined.
- Oven and water bathNo temperature is given. Bake at 350F, with the cups set in a roasting pan of hot water reaching halfway up their sides. Reckon 30 to 40 minutes for individual cups, longer for one shallow dish; the centre should be set but still trembling.
- A pint of milkTwo cups. Boil it, then temper the sugar-and-flour slurry in as directed; the base should be thick enough to coat a spoon before the yolks go in.
- Cups and shallow dishesRamekins or ovenproof custard cups, buttered and sugared so the batter can climb. Fill about three-quarters full.
- The doubled line"Whites, beaten stiff" is printed twice — a duplication in the text, not a second addition of egg white. Five eggs total, separated.
- Powdered sugar in the sauceIn this period powdered sugar usually meant finely ground granulated, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Either works here; modern confectioners' sugar dissolves faster and gives a slightly softer sauce.
- The sauceThis is a creamed hard sauce warmed over a water bath until pourable — do not let it get hot enough to separate. For the wine flavouring, a tablespoon or two of sherry or Madeira is a common choice.
- Yield and timingSix to eight small puddings. Like any soufflé pudding it falls within a few minutes of leaving the oven, so have the sauce warm and serve straight from the water bath.
Sponge pudding belongs to a family of nineteenth-century puddings built on a cooked flour-and-milk paste — the same panada that underpins a savoury soufflé — enriched with yolks and raised with whipped whites rather than with suet or breadcrumbs. It sits between the heavier boiled puddings of the earlier part of the century and the lighter French-influenced entremets that American cookbooks were taking up later in the century, and the water bath is the giveaway: gentle, even heat to set the custard without curdling it. The recipe is credited to a named contributor, Mrs. Michael Schubert, in the manner of collections of signed household contributions; recipes of this kind commonly give quantities but no oven temperatures.