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Conservative Pudding
Ingredients.
Five ounces of Savoys and Ratafias (mixed).
The Yolks of five Eggs and one White.
Half a gill of Rum or Brandy.
One pint of Milk.
One tablespoonful of thick Apricot Jam.
Take a soufflé tin and well grease it, put the biscuits into it in layers with a little apricot jam between each layer, pour in the rum and let it soak in well, then pour in the milk and eggs, thoroughly mixed together. Cover over the tin with a greased paper, and steam for one hour.
A steamed sponge-and-custard pudding of the cabinet pudding family, written for a cook who already knows how to handle a custard. The whole thing turns on gentle steam.
- Keep the steam lazyThe pudding is a custard cooked in a steamer, and a hard rolling boil will curdle it and leave the mixture watery and pitted. Keep the water at a bare simmer for the full hour, and top it up with boiling water rather than cold.
- Savoy biscuits and ratafiasSavoys are the long, dry, finger-shaped sponge biscuits now sold as sponge fingers or savoiardi; ladyfingers work. Ratafias are small crisp almond macaroons about the size of a coin — amaretti, broken up, are the closest thing on a supermarket shelf. Five ounces total is roughly 140 g of the two mixed.
- Half a gillIn a British book of this period a gill is 5 fl oz, so half a gill is about 2½ fl oz, or 5 tablespoons. American sources of the same era often use a 4 fl oz gill, which would give 4 tablespoons — either is within range for the spirit here.
- The tinA "soufflé tin" in this period generally meant a plain straight-sided tinned mould, closer to a charlotte or dariole mould than to a modern fluted ceramic soufflé dish. Anything of about two pints that will sit in a steamer or in a covered pan of simmering water will do. Grease it well: the pudding is meant to be turned out.
- Greased paperThe buttered paper keeps condensation off the surface. Modern practice is the same idea with foil or a lid, tied or crimped so it does not sag onto the custard.
- The custard proportionFive yolks and one white to a pint of milk is a rich, soft set. Warming the milk before mixing it into the eggs shortens the cooking a little and gives a more even set, though the original says nothing about warming it.
- Apricot jamA tablespoonful between the layers is a flavouring, not a filling. If you want it to read on the plate, warm and sieve a few more spoonfuls with a little water and serve it as a sauce over the turned-out pudding.
- Doneness and yieldThe pudding is done when the centre is just set and barely wobbles -- around 175F if you check with a thermometer. Let it stand five minutes before unmoulding. It serves four to six.
Puddings named after the machinery of government were a small Victorian genre: Cabinet pudding, Chancellor's pudding, Diplomat(e) pudding and this Conservative pudding are all close relations, built from sponge biscuits or bread soaked in custard and steamed in a mould. The names are generally taken as fashionable flattery rather than the record of any particular dinner, and the distinctions between them are loose. The biscuit takes its name from ratafia, an almond-and-kernel flavouring, which came to be attached to any small bitter-almond macaroon.