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Green-Gage Puffs
Some stewed green-gages 1/2 lb. (2 cups) flour 1 egg 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder ½ teaspoonful salt Some milk ½ teaspoonful lemon extract Sift the flour into a basin with the baking powder and the salt, beat up the egg, and add a little milk to it, then add them gradually with the lemon extract to the dry ingredients, making a stiff batter. Put half a tablespoonful of this batter into buttered earthenware cups, then put in some stewed green-gages; put a tablespoonful of the batter on the top and cover with a buttered paper. Steam steadily for twenty minutes. These puffs may be baked in the oven. Any kind of stewed or fresh fruit may be used.
A steamed individual pudding of the plainest sort — a baking-powder batter wrapped around stewed fruit. The original's measurements have suffered in transcription, so read the quantities with care.
- The measurementsThe printed page gives one egg, and half a teaspoonful each of salt and lemon extract, which is what the text now reads. Half a teaspoon of salt suits two cups of flour, and that amount of lemon extract flavours without dominating.
- Flour by weight½ lb is 8 oz, about 225 g. Two cups to the half-pound was a common period equivalence; measured by modern scoop-and-level, 8 oz of all-purpose flour runs closer to 1¾ cups.
- The unmeasured milkNo quantity is given because the batter is judged by feel. Start with about ½ cup and add only enough to reach a stiff drop batter that holds its shape on the spoon — thin batter will run under the fruit and weep.
- Buttered earthenware cupsSmall ramekins or dariole moulds; the recipe gives no size. Butter them well and do not overfill; the baking powder lifts the batter in the first ten minutes.
- Buttered paperA round of buttered parchment laid on top, not sealed. It keeps condensation from the steamer lid off the surface. A loose square of foil serves the same purpose.
- Steaming setupStand the cups on a rack in a covered pan with water reaching a third of the way up, kept at a bare simmer. "Steadily" is the operative word — a hard rolling boil will jostle the cups and make the puffs coarse. Twenty minutes is right for this size; test with a skewer.
- If baked insteadThe recipe gives no oven temperature; a moderate oven, around 350–375F, for 20–25 minutes, until risen and dry in the centre. Baked puffs are likely to come out drier than steamed ones.
- Green-gagesA small green-skinned dessert plum, sweet and honeyed, still sold in season in Britain and France and occasionally in the US as greengage or Reine Claude. Any stewed plum, apricot or damson works; drain the fruit well so the syrup does not soak the batter.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; at half a tablespoonful of batter below the fruit and a tablespoonful above, ½ lb of flour would make a good many more than six. Turn them out and serve hot with custard, cream or the reserved fruit syrup.
Green-gage puffs belong to the long English tradition of small steamed puddings — batter and fruit cooked in individual cups over water rather than in one large basin, so each diner gets a whole one. The plum takes its English name from the Gage family — the account most often given names Sir William Gage — credited with introducing the French Reine Claude to England in the early eighteenth century, the label on the imported trees having been lost; the story rests largely on tradition, and in France the fruit still carries the older royal name. The recipe's reliance on earthenware cups suits a book of casserole and fireproof-china cookery: the same cups that held a savoury custard at one meal held a pudding at the next, and the closing note that "any kind of stewed or fresh fruit may be used" shows that the batter, not the plum, is the recipe.