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Marmalade Pudding No. 1
1/2 pound marmalade 3 ounces bread-raspings 2 ounces butter 1/4 pint milk Heat the milk and melt the butter in it. Pour the mixture over the bread-raspings, and mix in the marmalade. Butter a mold, put in the mixture, and steam for three hours. Serve with sweet white sauce or a wine sauce.
A steamed sponge-less pudding held together entirely by dried breadcrumb and marmalade, with no eggs at all. The result is dense, dark and very sweet, closer to a soft steamed bread pudding than a cake.
- Bread-raspingsThese are dried crusts and stale bread grated to a coarse powder, drier and finer than fresh crumbs. Three ounces is roughly three-quarters of a cup, or up to a cup if coarsely grated; make them by baking bread slices until fully dry and pale gold, then grating or pulsing them. Fresh soft crumbs will absorb the milk differently and give a wetter pudding.
- The quarter pintIf the book is following British measure, 1/4 pint is 5 fluid ounces (a scant 2/3 cup); in US measure it is 4 ounces (1/2 cup). Start with 1/2 cup and add more only if the mixture will not hold together in a spoon, since dried raspings vary a great deal in how much they take up.
- Marmalade quantityHalf a pound is about 3/4 cup of a thick Seville-type marmalade. A loose, syrupy modern marmalade adds more liquid, so hold back some of the milk if you use one.
- Steaming timeThree hours suits a large basin. In a 1-quart mold with a covered pot on a modern burner, 1 1/2 to 2 hours will often be enough; the pudding is set when a skewer comes out clean and the surface springs back. There is no egg or raising agent here, so extra time mainly serves to dry it out.
- Setting up the steamerButter the mold well, cover the top with buttered parchment or foil tied or crimped down so condensation cannot drip in, and stand it on a rack or folded cloth in a pot of simmering water reaching halfway up. Check the water level every 30 minutes and top up with boiling water.
- Turning outLet it stand 10 minutes off the heat before inverting, or the loose crumb structure will slump. Serve hot.
- Sauces"Sweet white sauce" of the period is generally milk thickened with cornstarch or flour, sweetened and flavored with vanilla; a wine sauce is typically a sweetened sherry or Madeira syrup thickened lightly with butter.
- YieldEnough for four modest servings, or six alongside fruit.
Steamed puddings bound with bread-raspings rather than flour and eggs were a staple of thrifty English kitchens well before this book was written, and the technique survived into meatless and wartime cookery precisely because it needed no eggs and used up stale bread. Marmalade — properly the bitter-orange preserve boiled with sugar and rind, from Portuguese marmelada, originally a quince paste — gave both the sweetening and the only flavoring, which is why the recipe carries no spice or zest. The "No. 1" in the title suggests it was one of several variations.