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Carrot Pudding No. 2
4 ounces of carrots 4 ounces of cake crumbs 1 breakfast cup of milk 2 ounces of sugar 1/2 ounce candied peel or crystallized cherries 1/2 wineglass sherry Boil the carrots until tender, drain, and pass through a sieve; add the cake crumbs--any stale pieces of plain cake may be used. Boil the milk with the sugar, pour over the cake crumbs and carrot; mix well; add the sherry. Bake in a well-buttered pie dish for half an hour. Garnish the top with candied peel or cherries before putting into oven.
A thrifty steamed-pudding cousin baked instead of boiled, built on stale cake and a small quantity of carrot. The measurements are English and pre-metric, and the original gives no oven temperature at all.
- Oven temperatureNone is stated. For a milk-and-crumb pudding baked half an hour, a moderate oven (around 350F) is a reasonable modern setting; too hot and the surface will dry and crack before the middle sets.
- Breakfast cupA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup, roughly 8 to 10 fl oz. Use 1 cup (240 ml) of whole milk; the mixture should be loose and sloppy going into the dish, not stiff.
- WineglassA Victorian and Edwardian wineglass is reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so half a wineglass is 1 fl oz (2 tablespoons) of sherry. A medium or cream sherry suits the sugar level better than a fino.
- Cake crumbs"Plain cake" means a cake without icing or heavy fruit: sponge, Madeira, or similar. Dry it out slightly and crumb it coarsely; iced or heavily fruited cake will throw the sugar and moisture off. Plain sponge is the closest modern equivalent.
- The carrotsFour ounces is roughly two medium carrots, weighed raw. Boil until fully soft and sieve or rice them rather than grating raw, or the pudding will be stringy and the carrot will not soften in half an hour.
- Candied peel and cherriesScattering these on top before baking, as instructed, will scorch them at anything above moderate heat. If your oven runs hot, add them for the last ten minutes instead.
- Dish and yieldA "pie dish" of the period is typically oval; use something that holds the mixture in a shallow layer, allowing well over a pint. The quantities make a small pudding, three to four modest servings, and it wants cream or a thin custard alongside.
- TestingHalf an hour is right for a shallow dish; the pudding is done when the centre is just set and no longer liquid under a light press. It firms further as it cools.
Carrot puddings belong to a long British line of sweet root-vegetable puddings that runs back well before the twentieth century, when carrots and parsnips were used to stretch scarce sugar and to add moisture and body to a pudding. This version does two jobs at once: it keeps the dish off the butcher's account and it uses up stale cake, a standing concern in households that baked plain cake weekly and had no wish to waste it. Cake crumbs, breadcrumbs and biscuit crumbs were all treated as interchangeable pudding bases in period cookery, and directions like "any stale pieces of plain cake may be used" are a familiar feature of such books. The half wineglass of sherry and the candied peel are the small gestures toward the dessert course; strip them out and this is a nursery pudding.