Five Eggs
Ingredients.
Two ounces of Castor Sugar.
One gill of Cream.
Half a pint of Milk.
One teaspoonful of Essence of Vanilla.
Put five yolks of eggs into a basin, add the sugar, milk, and cream. Whip five whites of eggs slightly, add the vanilla and stir lightly to the yolks of eggs. Take a pint plain mould, butter it inside, and cover the bottom with three rounds of buttered paper. Pour the mixture through a strainer into the mould, and tie a piece of stiff paper over the top. Steam the pudding gently for one hour and a quarter. When cooked, stand the mould in ice. For serving, turn it out carefully, and ornament it with red currant jelly.
A plain steamed vanilla custard, unmoulded and served cold — essentially a crème renversée cooked over water rather than in a bain-marie in the oven. The whole thing turns on the gentleness of the steam.
- The hinge: gentle steamKeep the water at a bare shiver, never a rolling boil. Steam much above a simmer drives the custard past setting into curdling, and it will weep water when turned out. The pudding is done when a knife slid into the centre comes out clean and the middle registers about 175F.
- The eggs are in the title, not the listThe ingredient list omits them; the method supplies them: five eggs, separated, with the title doing the counting.
- Gill and pintA gill is a quarter of an Imperial pint, 5 fl oz. Half a pint is 10 fl oz. Together that is 15 fl oz of dairy — about 1¾ US cups plus a tablespoon or two.
- Mould sizeFifteen fluid ounces of liquid plus five eggs comes to well over an Imperial pint. Use a 1½-pint (roughly 3½ US cups) mould so the custard has room, and stand it on a folded cloth in the pan rather than directly on the metal.
- Castor sugarSuperfine or caster sugar. Granulated will dissolve perfectly well in this quantity of liquid; only two ounces (about ¼ cup) goes in, so the pudding is barely sweet and depends on the jelly for contrast.
- Buttered paperParchment rounds in the base, buttered, do exactly what the original intends — they lift away cleanly at unmoulding. For the cover, buttered parchment tied with string works; foil crimped over the rim is simpler and keeps condensation off the surface.
- Whipping the whites"Slightly" means broken up and just frothy, not to soft peaks. A stiff meringue folded in gives a soufflé texture that collapses; the aim here is a smooth, even set.
- Chilling and turning outStanding the mould in ice was the period method of setting the custard firm enough to unmould. Several hours in the refrigerator does the same. Loosen the edge with a thin knife, invert onto a cold plate, and give it a moment to release.
- YieldServes four to six as written. The recipe finishes it by ornamenting with red currant jelly; any sharp fruit jelly does the same job of cutting the richness.
Steamed and baked egg custards under names like "cabinet pudding," "crème renversée" and simply "custard pudding" were a common part of the late-Victorian sweet course, and cookery-school books taught them early because they drill the two lessons that govern all egg cookery: proportion of egg to liquid, and control of heat. The recipe's economy is telling: two ounces of sugar for five eggs and nearly a pint of dairy makes a pudding barely sweet by modern standards, with much of the sweetness delegated to the currant jelly at the table. Red currant jelly appears often in books of this date, both with meat and with cream puddings.