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Walnut Pudding
Beat the yolks of three eggs till light and lemon colored. Gradually add to them half a cup of sugar, then one-third of a cup of soft bread crumbs, and a scant half cup of farina. Mix perfectly, fold in the whites of three eggs beaten stiff, and half a cup of broken nut meats.
Pour into two layer cake pans which have been buttered and floured. Bake for half an hour in a slow oven. When slightly cooled put the layers together with a creamy sauce made as follows:
Cream one-half cup of butter, add gradually one-half cup of sifted powdered sugar and two tablespoons of milk, added drop by drop. Flavor with one tablespoon of brandy. If desired this pudding may be served as it is, or with a sauce for which the following recipe provides:
Mix one-half cup of sugar, one and one-half tablespoons of flour and a dash of salt. Pour over this one cup of boiling water and cook five minutes. Add two tablespoons of butter and vanilla for flavoring. Serve hot. Katherine A.
French.
A light, flourless sponge-style pudding leavened only by beaten egg white and baked in two shallow layers. The instructions are complete but assume a cook who knows what farina is and what a slow oven does.
- The hinge: fold, don't stirThere is no baking powder or soda here. Every bit of lift comes from the three stiffly beaten whites, so fold them in with a light hand and get the batter into the pans immediately. Over-mixing at that stage gives a dense, rubbery layer.
- FarinaUncooked farina, sold today as Cream of Wheat or plain farina cereal — fine-milled wheat middlings, not semolina flour and not the instant hot cereal with added flavouring. It absorbs moisture in the batter and gives the pudding its slightly grainy, custardy body. A scant half cup means just under, roughly 3 oz by weight.
- Slow ovenPeriod usage generally means something in the region of 275-325°F. Half an hour at the lower end of that will set two thin layers through without browning the edges; check that the centre springs back rather than relying on the clock alone.
- The pans"Layer cake pans" of the period were shallow rounds, commonly somewhere around 8 or 9 inches across. Butter and flour them properly - the batter has no added fat beyond the yolks and nuts and will grip bare metal.
- Soft bread crumbsFresh crumbs torn or grated from the inside of a day-old loaf, not dried or toasted crumbs from a canister, which would absorb far more liquid and stiffen the batter.
- Nut meatsWalnuts, given the title, broken by hand rather than chopped fine. Half a cup is about 2 oz.
- The creamy fillingThis is an uncooked butter-and-sugar cream, essentially a brandy buttercream. Let the layers cool to barely warm before spreading it or it will slide off. The brandy can be left out, though it is doing real work against the sweetness of the sugar.
- The alternative sauceA basic flour-thickened sweet sauce. Cook it the full five minutes after the boiling water goes in, or the flour will taste raw, and add the butter and vanilla off the heat.
- YieldTwo sandwiched layers, serving six to eight in small portions.
Puddings built on farina or semolina rather than flour were common in American cookbooks around 1900, when wheat breakfast cereals were widely advertised and regarded as wholesome for invalids and children - using one in a dessert carried a faint air of nutritional virtue alongside the brandy buttercream. The signature at the end is the tell: many household cookbooks of the period gathered contributed recipes from readers, so entries often carry a contributor's name rather than a house attribution. The construction - beaten yolks and sugar, crumbs, a starch, folded whites - is the old sponge-pudding method that predates chemical leavening, here baked in cake layers rather than steamed in a mould.