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Favorite Dishes in Famous Homes: Pudding
English Pudding.
Yolks 4 eggs, 2 tablespoonfuls sugar, 1 tablespoonful cornstarch, 1 pint milk, 1 teaspoonful vanilla.
Stir on fire in a double boiler milk, eggs, sugar, and cornstarch till it thickens, then add whites of eggs beaten to a stiff froth. Put in a deep dish a layer of fruit, then one of macaroons, and pour custard on top.
When cold, cover with a thin layer of ielly and 1 pint whipped cream- Mash 12 vanilla wafers with a rolling-pin, and pour over them a wineglass of whisky. When soft, add 1 quart sweet milk and sweeten to taste. Whip 1 quart cream, sweeten to taste, flavor with a teaspoonful extract of almond, mix with first concoction, and freeze. From Mrs. Augustus E. Willson, wife of Governor of Kentucky.
Frankfort Pudding.
Make a plain ice cream as follows:
Put 1 pint new milk in a double boiler; when gradually hot, add to 2 tablespoonfuls flour a little milk; stir until free from lumps, add to scalded milk and boil until a little thicker than custard. Strain into 1 quart rich cream; add 2 cupfuls powdered sugar, whites 2 eggs (unbeaten), and 2 teaspoonfuls vanilla. Freeze, line a mold with ice cream, and fill center with following mixture:
The night before you wish to use them, take pound candied cherries and cut into small pieces, and pound French chestnuts shelled, blanched, boiled until soft, and cut into small pieces. Let these stand over night in sherry to cover them.
Mix lightly with 1 quart whipped cream and fill the center of mold; close it and set in salt and ice four hours. Serve with a sauce of whipped cream flavored with sherry.
From Mrs. Bert M. Fernald, wife of Governor of Maine.
Chocolate Cake.
Melt + cupful butter, and gradually add 1½ cupfuls sugar. Scrape pound chocolate fine, add 3 teaspoonfuls sugar and 3 tablespoonfuls hot water; stir over steam until smooth.
Add to sugar and butter, then drop in yolks 3 eggs, stir, and add whites 3 eggs beaten to a stiff froth. Add cupful milk in which½ teaspoonful soda is dissolved, and lastly 1½ cupfuls flour in which is mixed 1 tea FAVORITE DISHES IN FAMOUS HOMES 1029 spoonful cream tartar and a little salt. Flavor with vanilla.
Frosting 1½ cupfuls sugar, cupful water.
Boil until it threads, add to the beaten white 1 egg, a few drops at a time, and stir constantly; flavor.
From Mrs. G. H. Prouty, wife of Governor of Vermon Maple Parfait. 1 cupful maple sirup, Yolks 6 eggs, 1 pint cream.
Heat sirup to boiling point, pour slowly onto beaten egg yolks and the whip from cream, turn into a mold and pack in equal measures of finely crushed ice and rock salt. Let stand four hours and serve with chopped browned almonds.
From Mrs. Albert B. Cummins, wife of U. S. Senator from Iowa.
Almond Tart.
Yolks 9 eggs, 1 pound sugar, pound grated almonds, 2 cupfuls grated lady's fingers, 1 teaspoonful vanilla, 1 teaspoonful baking powder, Juice and rind 1 lemon, Whites 9 eggs, Mix ingredients in order given, and bake in two layers in moderate oven.
This stretch of the "Famous Homes" pages runs several desserts together, and two of the frozen ones rely on raw egg that is never brought to a safe temperature. Notes below cover the vocabulary and the vessels, and flag what fails.
- Raw egg in the frozen dessertsThe Frankfort Pudding adds the whites of two eggs unbeaten to a base that is then only frozen, and the Maple Parfait relies on hot syrup poured over six raw yolks. Freezing does not kill Salmonella, and hot syrup poured onto yolks off the heat does not reliably carry them to 160F. Use a current custard-base or pasteurised-egg recipe instead.
- Uncooked whisky-and-wafer freezeThe unnamed frozen dish attributed to Mrs. Willson soaks wafers in a wineglass of whisky, then adds a quart of sweet milk and a quart of whipped cream and freezes the lot. The whisky is nowhere near a preserving proportion and the dairy is never scalded.
- WineglassA period wineglass as a kitchen measure is about 2 fluid ounces, or a quarter cup. It is not a modern stemmed glass.
- Ice and salt freezing"Pack in equal measures of finely crushed ice and rock salt" describes a hand freezer or a sealed mold buried in a brine bath; four hours in salt and ice is a still-frozen set, not churning. A modern machine or a still-frozen semifreddo mold does the same work.
- Sweet milk and new milkBoth mean plain fresh whole milk, named to distinguish it from sour or buttermilk. "Rich cream" is heavy cream at 36 percent or above.
- Lady's fingersSavoiardi, the dry Italian sponge biscuit, grated to crumbs. In the Almond Tart there is no flour: the crumbs and the grated almonds carry the whole structure alongside nine eggs, so the crumbs must be dry, not soft cake.
- Moderate ovenFor the Almond Tart, read "moderate" as 350F. Two layers of that egg-heavy batter want about 25 to 30 minutes, tested with a skewer.
- Soda and cream of tartarThe Chocolate Cake uses soda dissolved in milk plus cream of tartar sifted with the flour: this is homemade baking powder. Two teaspoons of modern double-acting baking powder in the flour is the equivalent, and the batter should go into the oven promptly.
- Frosting to the thread"Boil until it threads" is roughly 230 to 235F on a candy thermometer, poured in a thin stream into a beaten white for a soft boiled-icing.
Favorite Dishes in Famous Homes belongs to a genre that flourished from the 1890s through the 1910s: cookbooks assembled from recipes solicited by letter from the wives of governors, senators and other public men, whose names sold the book as surely as the food did. The dishes gathered here show what a well-provisioned American household considered festive in that decade -- iced puddings and parfaits set in molds packed with rock salt, layered trifles of macaroons and custard under whipped cream, and a maple parfait from an Iowa senator's wife using the syrup that New England and the upper Midwest supplied in quantity. The "Frankfort Pudding" from Maine is built as an ice-cream shell lined in a mold and filled with a center of candied cherries and blanched chestnuts steeped overnight in sherry, mixed with whipped cream -- a dinner-party showpiece rather than family cooking. Home freezing at this date meant a hand-cranked freezer or a buried mold and a delivery of block ice, so these recipes are also a record of who could afford an icehouse or an iceman.