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Nut Pudding
2 eggs, 1/2 cupful of sugar, 1 cupful of sweet milk, 1/2 cupful of melted butter, 1 good pint of sifted flour, 2 teaspoonfuls of baking-powder, 1/2 teaspoonful of salt, 1 1/2 cupfuls of nuts dredged in flour. Beat eggs very light; add sugar, milk, melted butter, flour and baking-powder, salt. Beat hard until thoroughly mixed. Then add nuts. Let pudding steam three hours. Golden Sauce (for the Pudding).--Cream 1 heaping teaspoonful of butter; add gradually 1 cupful of sugar, yolks of 3 eggs, 3 tablespoonfuls of milk. Then add the whites of the eggs, beaten as stiff as possible. Do not mix in the whites, but fold in lightly, and beat lightly. Favor with vanilla. This should be made just before the pudding is served.
The pudding itself is a straightforward steamed nut batter; the Golden Sauce that accompanies it is a raw-egg foam that is never cooked at any point, which is why the caution above applies to the recipe as a whole.
- Why the sauce fails todayGolden Sauce is three raw yolks and three raw whites beaten with sugar, butter and milk, then served without heat. Nothing in the method brings the eggs anywhere near the 160F needed to deal with Salmonella, and the recipe directs that it be made just before serving, so there is no cooking step at any stage. If you want a pouring sauce for the pudding, use a current recipe for a cooked custard or hard sauce.
- A pint of sifted flourFlour was commonly measured by volume in this period. A pint of sifted flour is 2 cups, weighing roughly 8 oz; "a good pint" means a generous, lightly heaped measure. Sift before measuring, not after, or the batter turns heavy.
- Sweet milkThis means ordinary fresh milk, specified to distinguish it from the sour milk or buttermilk used with saleratus in other recipes of the era. Whole milk is the closest match.
- Dredging the nutsTossing the chopped nuts in flour before folding them in keeps them suspended rather than sinking to the bottom of the mold during a long steam. Do it last, and fold rather than beat once they go in.
- The steaming setupButter a covered pudding mold or basin and fill it no more than two-thirds, since baking powder and steam will lift the batter. Set it on a rack in a pot with boiling water reaching halfway up the mold, keep the lid on, and top up with boiling water as it evaporates so the pot never runs dry over three hours.
- Three hours is not a misprintSteam works gently, and a dense nut batter in a closed mold genuinely needs that long to set through. Test with a skewer into the center; it should come out clean and the pudding should pull slightly from the sides.
- "Favor with vanilla"Read as flavor with vanilla \type in older printings.
- YieldThe ingredients come to roughly 1 1/2 quarts of batter, enough for about six to eight servings; choose a mold large enough to leave headroom. It is best turned out and sliced hot.