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Bakewell Pudding
Steam ¼ pound puff paste (see pastry section) ¼ pound butter 6 ounces sugar 1 ounce almonds (chopped) Yolks of 5 eggs and white of 1 egg Raspberry or strawberry jam.
Cover a dish with thin paste, and over this put a layer of jam (raspberry or strawberry preferred). Put the yolks of 5 eggs into a basin with the white of 1. and beat well. Add the sugar (sifted), butter and the almonds (well pounded).
Now beat all together until well mixed. then pour into the dish over the jam. Bake for one hour in moderate oven.
A true Bakewell pudding rather than the later cherry-topped tart: a thin puff pastry shell, jam, and a rich almond-and-egg-yolk custard poured over. The recipe is filed under boiled puddings and opens with the word "Steam," but the method plainly says to bake, and baking is correct.
- Moderate ovenSet the oven to 350F. An hour at that heat is the outside limit for a filling this rich; start checking at 40 minutes.
- The filling is a custard, not a spongeFive yolks and one white with no flour gives a soft, almost curd-like set. It is done when the centre has only a faint wobble; carried past that it weeps and turns grainy.
- ButterA quarter pound is 115 g. Melt it and let it cool to barely warm before beating it into the eggs and sugar, or it will scramble the yolks.
- AlmondsThe ingredient list says chopped, the method says well pounded. Pounded is right: use 30 g of ground almonds, or grind whole blanched almonds fine. Chopped nuts sit in the custard rather than thickening it.
- SugarSix ounces is about 170 g. "Sifted" here means sifted to break lumps, not confectioner's sugar; granulated or caster is what is wanted.
- Puff pasteA quarter pound of pastry, roughly 115 g, is enough to line a shallow 8-inch pie plate thinly. Bought all-butter puff works. Roll it thin; the recipe gives no instruction to blind bake.
- JamThree to four tablespoons spread over the base. Use a firm-set jam; a loose one will bleed up through the custard.
- Yield and servingServes six. It is traditionally eaten warm rather than hot, with cream, and it firms up considerably as it cools.
Bakewell pudding takes its name from the market town in Derbyshire, and its origin is one of the better-known bits of English culinary folklore: the story generally told is that a cook at a Bakewell inn misread her instructions and spread the egg-and-almond mixture over the jam instead of stirring it into the pastry. The tale is traditional rather than documented, but the dish itself is real enough and was well established in print by the mid-nineteenth century. What distinguishes the pudding from the modern Bakewell tart is exactly what this version preserves: puff paste rather than shortcrust, a loose almond custard rather than a flour-bound frangipane, and no icing at all.