Home › Creams, Jellies and Cold Sweets › Diplomatic Pudding
Diplomatic Pudding
Ingredients.
One pint of Custard. See above.
Half a pint of Jelly. See p. 247.
One ounce of French Gelatine.
Two ounces of Sponge Cake.
Two ounces of Ratafias.
Two ounces of Castor Sugar.
One gill of Cream Vanilla Essence.
One ounce and a half of dried Cherries.
One ounce of Angelica.
Half an ounce of Citron.
Line a plain mould with jelly and decorate it with half an ounce of dried cherries and half an ounce of angelica. Melt the gelatine in a gill of water and stir it into the custard, add also the castor sugar, flavouring and cream: stir this occasionally until it is cool, then stir the rest of the cherries, the angelica, and half an ounce of citron, all chopped up. Pour this gently into the mould you have decorated. When it is set, turn out and serve.
Gâteaux à l'Africaine.
Ingredients.
A moulded set custard in the French diplomate style, from a period when clear jelly linings and candied fruit decoration were the mark of a good cold sweet. Two things need attention before you start: the gelatine quantity and the sponge cake, which is listed but never mentioned again in the method.
- The gelatine is the hingeOne ounce (28 g) of gelatine to the roughly 850 ml of custard, water and cream here gives a rubbery, sliceable block by modern standards; Victorian gelatine was often less consistent than the modern product. With current leaf or powdered gelatine, 15-18 g for this volume should set firmly enough to unmould cleanly.
- GillAn imperial gill is 5 fl oz, about 142 ml, or a little under two-thirds of a US cup. The recipe uses two: one of water to bloom and melt the gelatine, one of cream.
- The missing sponge cakeTwo ounces of sponge cake are in the ingredient list and nowhere in the instructions. In the standard diplomate method it is sliced thin and layered into the mould with the fruit as the cream is poured in, or crumbled through the mixture. Either reading works; layering gives the better cut.
- RatafiasSmall crisp almond macaroons, roughly the size of a coin, historically flavoured with bitter almond. Amaretti are the closest thing on a modern shelf. They too are absent from the method and belong with the sponge cake.
- Candied fruitAngelica is the candied stem of Angelica archangelica, sold in green batons and still available from cake-decorating suppliers. Citron here means candied citron peel, not lemon. 'Dried cherries' in books of this period most likely means glacé or candied cherries rather than the modern sour dried kind, though the term was used for both.
- Castor sugarSuperfine or caster sugar. Two ounces is about 60 g; add it to the warm custard so it dissolves rather than grits.
- The jelly liningThe cross-reference is to a clear jelly of the kind used for lining moulds. Set a thin layer in the chilled mould first, press the cherry and angelica decoration into it, then fix that with a second thin coat of nearly cold jelly before the custard goes in, or the pattern will float.
- Cooling before filling"Stir this occasionally until it is cool" matters. Pour the custard in while warm and it will melt the jelly lining and blur the decoration; let it thicken to the consistency of pouring cream first.
- Unmoulding and yieldDip the mould in hot water for three or four seconds only, then invert onto a wetted plate so you can slide it straight. The quantities suggest something in the region of six to eight servings, though the recipe gives no yield.
Pudding à la diplomate belongs to the family of moulded cold sweets that French pastry cooks built out of custard, gelatine, sponge and candied fruit in the nineteenth century, alongside the charlotte russe and the various bavarois. The name is usually explained as a compliment to the diplomatic corps, the sort of showpiece served at an embassy dinner, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented and the dish appears in English books simply as a grand thing to send to table cold. Its presence in a late-Victorian high-class cookery manual is telling: it requires a good stock jelly, a properly made custard and a decorated mould, all cross-referenced to other pages, which is exactly how professional kitchens of the period were organised. Nothing here is difficult on its own; the skill is in assembling four separate preparations at the right temperatures and getting the whole thing out of the mould intact.