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Extra Fine Pudding
Make a batter of two teacupfuls of flour and four of milk. Beat the yolks and whites of four eggs separately. Then mix all together and add one tablespoonful of melted butter. Bake in a buttered pan and serve with wine sauce.--Mrs. McG.
A plain baked batter pudding of the Yorkshire type, sweetened entirely by its sauce. The original assumes a cook who already knows how batter puddings behave, so the two things it leaves out — oven heat and time — are the two things worth settling before you start.
- TeacupfulIn American books of this period a teacup is usually reckoned at about 3/4 cup, not a full measuring cup, though usage was inconsistent. Taken that way the recipe is roughly 1 1/2 cups flour to 3 cups milk; the ratio, not the absolute amount, is what matters, and it should pour like heavy cream.
- Oven heatNo temperature or time is given. Treat it as a hot oven, around 425F, which is what makes a thin batter climb and set with a hollow, custardy interior. A moderate oven will give you a dense, damp slab instead.
- Timing and panExpect 35 to 45 minutes in a well-buttered shallow baking dish or metal pan, undisturbed. Open the oven early and the puff collapses. It is done when the top is browned and the centre no longer trembles in a liquid way.
- The separated eggsThis is the hinge. The recipe says only to beat yolks and whites separately and then mix; beating the whites and folding them in gently is the sole added leavening — there is no baking powder, no yeast — though steam from so thin a batter does much of the rising. Beat the whites stiff and dry and they will not fold in without deflating.
- No salt, no sugarThe batter is entirely unseasoned as written. A pinch of salt is period-appropriate and improves it considerably; leave the sugar out, since the sauce supplies it.
- Wine sauceThe recipe assumes you have one to hand. A period wine sauce is generally butter and sugar creamed together, thinned with sherry or Madeira and warmed gently, sometimes with an egg yolk. Make it while the pudding bakes and serve both hot, as the pudding falls within minutes of leaving the oven.
- YieldServes six as written, and it does not reheat well. Bake it to be eaten.
Batter puddings like this one are the direct descendants of the English dripping pudding, cooked under roasting meat to catch the fat and later given its own pan and its own name. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) was compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by other cooks — here credited only as "Mrs. McG." — which is why the instructions read like one cook telling another something she already half knows, with the oven heat and baking time left out entirely. The title is worth noting: whatever "extra fine" was meant to convey, the pudding is one of eggs and milk, with no suet, breadcrumbs or dried fruit in it. The dependence on a wine sauce for all its sweetness also places it firmly in a house with a stocked sideboard.