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Sweetmeat Pudding
Yolks of 10 eggs. Whites of 2. 1 pound of sugar.
Half a pound of butter, beaten with the sugar, and poured over pastry, on which is placed a layer of sweetmeats and a layer of some other preserves. Any two kinds of preserves may be used.-Mrs.--.
Sweetmeat Pudding. 1/2 pound of sugar. 1/2 pound of butter. Juice and rind of one lemon. 8 eggs. Mix the eggs, well beaten, with the sugar. Melt the butter and pour into the mixture. Line a dish with rich pastry, on which lay sweetmeats, damson, or peach preserves, or any other kind that may be convenient. On this, place one layer of the mixture above mentioned, then another of sweetmeats. Put a layer of the mixture on top, and bake.
Two versions of the same dish, printed one after the other: a butter-and-egg filling layered with fruit preserves in a pastry shell, close kin to English transparent pudding and to what the South later called chess pie. Neither version gives a temperature, a time, or a pan size.
- The hingeThis is a baked custard held together by egg and butter alone, with no flour or starch. Bake it gently and pull it while the centre still trembles; if it puffs, cracks and weeps butter, it has gone too far and will be grainy when cut.
- OvenBake at 325-350F; the sugar in the preserves scorches readily at anything higher. Reckon on 40-50 minutes for a 9-inch dish, until the filling is set at the edge and barely wobbling at the centre.
- SweetmeatsHere a sweetmeat means fruit preserved in heavy sugar syrup or candied fruit peel; the recipe glosses it itself as 'damson, or peach preserves, or any other kind.' The word could also cover confectionery more broadly in the period. Thick damson or peach preserves, or a firm citron or quince paste, all behave as intended; loose modern jam will thin the custard and soak the crust.
- Weights to volumeA pound of sugar is about 2 1/4 cups granulated; half a pound is a generous cup. Half a pound of butter is two sticks. The first version's pound of sugar with only half a pound of butter, and ten yolks plus two whites, is markedly sweeter than the second.
- The egg proportionsThe first version's ten yolks with two whites gives a dense, almost lemon-curd texture. The second version's eight whole eggs sets lighter and slicker.
- Butter temperatureThe second version melts the butter and pours it into the beaten egg and sugar. Let it cool to barely warm first, or it will scramble the eggs into threads that no amount of beating will smooth out.
- The pastryA wet filling on raw pastry gives a soggy base. Blind-bake the shell 15 minutes at 400F and let it cool before the preserves go in.
- Yield and servingEither quantity fills one deep 9-inch pastry-lined dish and cuts into 8 to 10 small wedges; it is very rich. Serve at room temperature, not hot, so the custard has firmed enough to slice cleanly.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named and unnamed Virginia housewives, prints recipes much as they were handed over, which is why the same dish appears twice here in different proportions and why one is credited only to "Mrs.--". Sweetmeat pudding is close kin to the English transparent puddings, which are often said to have crossed to the colonies in the eighteenth century: sugar, butter and a great many eggs baked in a pastry case, sometimes with lemon, sometimes layered with preserved fruit. The type is traditionally linked to the Southern chess pie, and it appears in Virginia cookbooks under names like transparent pie and sweetmeat pudding well into the twentieth century. Its logic is a larder logic, since the filling calls only on things a well-run household kept year-round, and the layer of preserves let a cook use up whatever the summer's putting-up had left in the closet.