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Washington Pudding
6 eggs (well beaten). 1/2 pound butter. 1/2 pound sugar. 1/2 1/2 pound marmalade. Bent well together, season with nutmeg, and bake in a paste.--Mrs. Dr. S.
A rich baked custard-in-pastry of the transparent-pudding family, given in the shorthand a nineteenth-century cook expected to fill in for herself. Nearly everything unstated matters here: the pastry, the oven, and how the butter is combined.
- "Bent well together"Almost certainly a compositor's error for beat well together. Nothing is bent, folded or turned out in this preparation.
- Cream the butter, do not melt itCream the butter rather than melting it -- Beat the half pound of butter with the half pound of sugar until pale, then work in the eggs a little at a time before adding the marmalade. Melted butter stirred into the eggs is more likely to separate in the oven and rise as a greasy layer on the set custard.
- Weights to volumesHalf a pound of butter is two sticks; half a pound of granulated sugar is a generous cup; half a pound of marmalade is roughly three-quarters of a cup. Weighing is more reliable than any of these conversions, particularly for the marmalade.
- "Bake in a paste"Paste means pastry. The recipe does not say whether the dish was lined only or also covered; a plain short crust lining the dish, with no top, suits the filling. A wet, eggy filling of this kind sets better in a shell blind-baked until dry and just coloured, then filled while still warm.
- OvenNo oven heat is given. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits it: the filling is a butter custard and turns grainy if driven hard; expect 40 to 55 minutes, until the edges are set and the centre still trembles slightly. It firms as it cools.
- The marmaladeThe recipe does not say what kind. Bitter orange marmalade was the common sort, and a bitter English-style marmalade keeps the pudding from being cloying against a full half pound of sugar; a sweet breakfast jelly will not.
- NutmegGrate it fresh and use about a quarter teaspoon for the whole batch. Pre-ground nutmeg loses its point in a mixture already carrying orange peel.
- YieldThe quantities fill one 9-inch shell generously, or a shallow 10-inch dish. Serve at room temperature in small wedges -- it is very rich, and one pie will go round ten or twelve people.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, gathered contributions from named and half-named Virginia households, which is why this one arrives credited only to "Mrs. Dr. S." The pudding belongs to the large Southern family of transparent puddings and chess pies — eggs, butter and sugar beaten together and baked in a pastry shell, with lemon, coconut, jam or, as here, marmalade as the flavouring. Patriotic names are often said to have attached themselves freely to such dishes in nineteenth-century American cookbooks; Washington, Jackson and Lafayette puddings and cakes are generally reported across regions with no consistent recipe behind them, so the title may tell you more about the period's habits of naming than about any connection to the man.