Bake
The chemist who will tell us what is the precise difference between baking and roasting will confer a benefit on mankind. We all see, or fancy that we see, a difference in the results; but what it is nobody has yet been able to define. The difference in the process is clear enough. In roasting, the meat is swinging or turning in free air before a bright fire. In baking, the meat is motionless in a confined space, and whatever heat comes to it is dark. The degrees of heat as marked by the thermometer may be the same in either case. Is there any difference in taste due to the fact that in the one case the rays of heat are bright and act in a free current of air, while in the other the rays Bakeweli Pudding of heat are dark and act upon a surface from which currents of air are excluded? If chemists were practical, they would work out this problem, which is of more interest to mankind than all their researches into the nature of elementary nothings with names longer than the titles of a Spanish grandee.
It will be observed that baking is here understood in a peculiar sense. By rights, we can speak of baking in the sun, or of baking anything before a clear fire. In common parlance, however, to bake meat is to put it on a bakingdish into a closed oven. A good oven can be made out of a common saucepan. This is an important point for those who are interested in impromptu cookery-for the campaigner who wishes to roast his game at a doubtful firefor the kitchenmaid who is suddenly called upon for a nice hot supper when the fire has gone down. Rub your bird with butter, and put it with more butter into a good copperpan on the doubtful fire. The pan becomes, when tight closed, a small oven, which can be occasionally opened to give the bird a turn and a baste. Such a pan has many and many a time baked a partridge in twenty minutes, a woodcock in fifteen; and no one has guessed that it has not been roasted before a brilliant fire.
BAKEWELL PUDDING is the glory of Derbyshire. One might have expected some miracle of excellence for the palate from the ducal residence of Chatsworth, with all its fame and its splendour, and the highest fountain jet in the world. But, although a Duchess of Devonshire once kissed a butcher, the great house of Cavendish has done nothing for our tables which can compare with the humble achievement of some unknown genius in the small town of Bakewell, nigh to the prodigious Chatsworth. Line a pie-dish with a light paste. Place on this a thickish layer of any preserved fruit from the most common to the most refined-let us say peaches or apricots. The Banting Bakewellians are in the habit of intermingling this with candied citron or orange-peel cut into thin stripes-a part of the ceremony which may be safely omitted. Make a custard of six yolks and three whites of eggs, from four to five ounces of clarified butter, six ounces of sifted sugar, and three spoonfuls of what the Bakewellians call lemonbrandy-that is, brandy which has been flavoured by long maceration with the zest of lemons. A little of the zest of a lemon may be used instead, or any other flavour that may be preferred. Pour the custard over and among the apricot jam, and bake the pudding in a moderate oven for three-quarters of an hour.
Two things are folded into this entry: a note on improvising an oven from a lidded pan, and a genuine recipe for Bakewell pudding. The pudding is a rich egg-and-butter custard over jam in pastry, and it succeeds or fails on the temperature of the oven.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as about 350F/175C, with the shelf in the middle. Higher and the custard is apt to curdle and weep around the edge before the centre is set; the three-quarters of an hour the recipe gives suits a pie-dish of ordinary size.
- Light pasteA plain shortcrust or, better, puff pastry — Bakewell pudding is traditionally made on puff. Blind-bake the shell until dry and pale before the jam goes in, or the filling will soak the base.
- The egg ratioSix yolks to three whites is deliberate: mostly yolk for richness, a little white for structure. Eggs of the period were probably smaller on average than today's large ones, so medium eggs will keep the proportion of egg to the 4–5 oz butter and 6 oz sugar closer to the original.
- Clarified butterMelt the butter and let it cool to barely warm before beating it into the yolks and sugar. Hot butter poured onto yolks scrambles them. Clarifying (skimming off the milk solids) keeps the set custard clean-tasting; ordinary melted butter works if you skim the foam.
- Weights and spoonfuls4–5 oz butter is 115–140 g; 6 oz sugar is 170 g. "Three spoonfuls" of lemon-brandy most likely means tablespoons, roughly 45 ml — a substantial amount of flavouring, and the zest of one lemon plus a tablespoon of brandy gives a similar effect.
- Lemon-brandyNot sold as such now. It is simply brandy left for a week or more with pared lemon zest, strained; the zest of one lemon to a small bottle. Almond extract is the modern default in Bakewell tarts, but it is not what this recipe calls for.
- Jam layerSpread the preserve thin, about 4–5 mm, and cold. A thick warm layer will float up into the custard. The author's own default here is apricot, though he allows "any preserved fruit"; the candied peel he dismisses does add texture if you want it.
- Doneness and yieldThe top should be golden and the centre just set with a faint wobble; a knife inserted off-centre comes out clean. Serves six to eight, and it is better warm than hot, when the butter is still loose.
- The saucepan ovenThe trick described at the start works: a heavy pan with a tight lid over low heat behaves like a small oven. The twenty minutes belongs to a very small game bird; anything larger, including most birds likely to be substituted, will need longer, so cook to temperature instead.
Bakewell pudding belongs to the Derbyshire market town of Bakewell, three miles from Chatsworth, and its origin is traditionally told as an accident: a cook at a local inn, so the story goes, misunderstood her instructions and spread the egg mixture over the jam rather than stirring it into the pastry. The tale is repeated everywhere and documented nowhere, and the town's rival bakeries have each claimed the original for well over a century. What is clear is that the dish here is a pudding, not the almond-frangipane "Bakewell tart" of later British baking \only only ground almonds appear at all, only eggs \ butter, sugar and lemon-flavoured brandy set over preserve on a light paste. Kettner's aside about the Duchess of Devonshire who "kissed a butcher" refers to Georgiana Cavendish canvassing for votes in the Westminster election of 1784, a scandal still worth a joke a century afterwards; the point of the passage is the author's fondness for provincial cooking over aristocratic kitchens. The opening argument about baking versus roasting was a live one in Victorian kitchens. Meat had for centuries been turned on a spit before an open fire, and the closed cast-iron range oven was still the newer arrangement; cooks and diners insisted they could taste the difference, and the essay's appeal to chemists to settle it reflects a period when the science of cookery was being invoked more often than it was understood.