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Economical Batter Pudding
4 tablespoons Five Roses flour ½ pint milk Pinch of salt.
Place the flour and salt in a basin, make a hole in the centre of the flour and pour in half the milk. Work with a spoon, gradually getting the flour all mixed down in the milk. Beat the batter for about 10 minutes, or until a lot of little bubbles rise to the surface. Then add the remainder of the milk. Pour into a shallow, well-greased tin and bake about 20 minutes. If possible, make the batter an hour or two before baking, for the air to get well into it.
Note on Batter Puddings-Batter puddings of all kinds, especially when made with fruit, are more tasty steamed than baked.
An eggless batter pudding from a flour-company book, where the whole point is to build lift by beating and resting rather than by buying eggs. Two things the original leaves out: the oven temperature and the fact that there are no eggs at all.
- The hinge: beat, then restWith no eggs, the only leavening is air worked into the batter plus steam from the milk. The ten minutes of beating and the hour or two of standing are not optional garnish; skip them and you get a flat, dense pancake in a tin.
- Imperial half pintThis is a Canadian book, so a pint is 20 fluid ounces and ½ pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. With 4 tablespoons of flour that gives a very thin, crêpe-like batter, which is intended.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A thin batter of this kind wants a hot oven, somewhere in the region of 425-450F, so the edges set fast; treat that as a modern suggestion rather than the book's instruction. The recipe asks only for a well-greased tin.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian all-purpose hard-wheat flour, higher in protein than modern soft-wheat pastry flour. Ordinary bread or all-purpose flour is the closest match; cake flour will give a slacker, weaker batter.
- "Shallow tin"A metal pie plate or small rectangular pan, roughly 8 inches. The batter should sit no more than about half an inch deep, or the centre stays raw while the edges brown.
- TimingTwenty minutes suits a thin layer in a hot oven. Judge by sight: set through, browned and blistered at the rim. Do not open the door in the first ten minutes.
- Yield and servingOne ounce of flour to half a pint of milk makes a small pudding; two servings, at a stretch three as a side. Best eaten hot from the oven with syrup, jam or stewed fruit.
- The steaming noteThe book prefers fruit versions steamed. Steaming a batter this thin would mean a greased basin and considerably longer over simmering water than the 20 minutes given for baking, and the result will be soft rather than crisp.
Batter pudding is the plain ancestor of Yorkshire pudding: flour, milk and salt, cooked in a shallow tin, and traditionally set beneath roasting meat to catch the drippings, served ahead of the joint. What makes this version "economical" is the absence of eggs, which in a promotional flour book of the early twentieth century is both a thrift measure and a quiet argument for the flour itself, since the lift has to come from beating and resting. The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and drew on recipes contributed by Canadian users of the flour, which accounts for the terse tone; no oven temperature is given, as the book leaves heat to the cook's judgement.