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Rum Pudding
Grate 3 ounces of stale bread crumbs, and pour over them as much rum as will moisten them. When they are well soaked, beat them up with 6 ounces of sugar, a little grated nutmeg, and first the yolks, and afterwards the well-whisked whites, of 4 eggs. Pour the mixture into a buttered mould, and let it steam until done enough. Turn it upon a hot dish, pour half a tumblerful of rum over it, set light to this, and serve immediately. Time to steam the pudding, one hour.
A steamed bread-and-egg pudding of the plainest kind, carried entirely by rum and eggs. The instructions assume you know how to rig a steamer and how much rum breadcrumbs will take.
- Weights in cupsThree ounces of freshly grated stale breadcrumbs is roughly 1 1/2 cups, loosely packed. Six ounces of sugar is a generous 3/4 cup, which makes this markedly sweet by current taste; the eggs, not the sugar, do the setting, so a reduction will not stop it setting.
- "As much rum as will moisten them"This is genuinely open-ended in the original. Three ounces of crumbs will absorb somewhere near 1/3 cup before they stop being crumbs and turn to paste; add it in stages and stop while the mixture is damp rather than wet.
- Use real stale breadGrate or crumb a day-old open-crumb loaf. Dried commercial breadcrumbs are far thirstier and much finer, and will drink the rum into a dense plug instead of a light sponge.
- Fold, do not beat, the whitesThe recipe says beat, but the whisked whites are the only leavening here. Fold them in in two additions and get the pudding into the mould at once; a deflated mixture steams to something closer to bread sauce.
- Setting up the steamerButter the mould and fill no more than two-thirds; the mixture from 4 eggs and 6 ounces of sugar needs something nearer a quart than a pint. Cover tightly with buttered parchment and foil, and set on a trivet in a pan of simmering water reaching halfway up. Keep the water at a bare simmer and top it up with boiling water as it drops.
- Judging "done enough"One hour, as the recipe states, suits a mould of this size. It is set when a skewer in the centre comes out clean and the pudding has just begun to shrink from the sides; let it stand five minutes before turning out or it may collapse.
- Flaming itHalf a tumblerful is around 1/2 cup, more than needed. Warm 2 to 3 tablespoons of rum in a small pan until it steams, pour it over the hot pudding, and light it at arm's length with a long match, away from the extractor fan and anything overhead. Cold spirit straight from the bottle is much less reliable and tends simply to make the pudding wet.
- YieldFour small servings. It is rich and rum-forward, and wants unsweetened whipped cream or a thin custard alongside.
Grated-bread puddings like this one were long a thrifty staple of English dessert cookery, using up the stale end of the loaf in place of flour, and by the nineteenth century such puddings were being dressed up with spirits and served flaming for company. Rum reached British kitchens in quantity through the West India trade, and by the 1800s it was a common cooking spirit for puddings, sauces and punch, generally cheaper than brandy. Setting light to the spirit at the table is usually associated with the same theatrical impulse that gave the flaming Christmas pudding its place in Victorian dining rooms.