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Sponge Pudding (No. 2)
1 cup granulated sugar 1 cup Five Roses flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 3 tablespoons hot water.
Make 3 layers. 1 quart milk 4 eggs CUSTARD 3 tablespoons granulated sugar.
Put between layers and on top. Whip 1 pint cream for top.
This is one of the terser contributions in the book, and the ingredient list has been set in a jumbled order — cake and custard components run together. Read it as three thin sponge layers, a stirred custard between and over them, and whipped cream on top.
- The eggs are missing from the cakeA cup of sugar, a cup of flour and three tablespoons of hot water will not make a sponge layer of any kind, so eggs appear to be absent from the cake portion as printed; whether they were lost in transcription or simply never spelled out cannot be told. Sponge layers of this period commonly use three or four eggs beaten thick with the sugar before the flour goes in, but the original as printed does not say so and the quantity is genuinely unrecoverable.
- Baking powder in a spongeTwo teaspoons to one cup of flour is heavy by modern standards, and rates of this kind are common in recipes of the period. With current double-acting powder a cup of flour rarely needs more than a teaspoon and a quarter.
- "Make 3 layers"One cup of flour spread over three tins gives very thin layers. The recipe specifies no pan size, oven heat or time; layers this thin need only a few minutes in a moderate oven, and they colour and dry out fast.
- The custard is the hingeOne quart of milk to four eggs is a thin pouring custard, and it must be cooked in a double boiler and pulled at 175-180F, when it coats the spoon. Above that the eggs scramble and no amount of stirring brings it back.
- Old measuresCream roughly doubles in volume when whipped, so this quantity is generous for one pudding top. Note that a Canadian imperial pint is 20 fluid ounces rather than the 16 of a US pint, and period spoon measures were not fully standardised.
- Filed under Boiled PuddingsNot actually boiled -- Nothing in this recipe is described as boiled or steamed: the layers are evidently baked and the custard cooked on the stovetop, which sits oddly with the pudding name.
- Assembly and yieldLet the layers cool before the custard goes on, or it soaks straight through and the whole thing collapses. Assemble no more than an hour or two ahead, keep it refrigerated, and count on 8 servings.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Winnipeg and distributed in connection with its Five Roses flour — one of the most widely circulated Canadian cookbooks of the early twentieth century. Its recipes were solicited from housewives across the Dominion, which may account for the compressed, shorthand style of entries like this one. The dish itself belongs to a large family of late-Victorian and Edwardian puddings built from a plain sponge, a boiled custard and whipped cream — the same logic that produces trifle, and a practical way to stretch a single cup of flour into a company dessert.