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Nut Pudding No. 1
6 ounces of Pignolias 6 ounces of almonds 6 ounces of walnuts White of 4 eggs 4 ounces of rusk crumbs Flavor with a little lemon Prepare the nuts, and put them two or three times through a good nut mill; then pound in a mortar; add the rusk crumbs. Beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, add the flavoring, and mix all well together. Put into a well greased basin, and steam for about seven hours. It may be cooked without rusk crumbs if desired, and is nice either cold or hot.
A steamed nut loaf of the vegetarian-cookery school, bound with egg white rather than eggs whole. The proportions work; the timing does not.
- Steaming timeSeven hours is longer than a mixture of this size is likely to need; a greased basin of nut and crumb batter should be set through in a fraction of that over simmering water, and beyond that point you are mainly drying it out and risking the pan boiling dry. Check with a skewer from two hours on.
- PignoliasPine nuts. They are high in oil and turn bitter quickly, so buy them fresh and taste one before committing six ounces.
- Rusk crumbsRusk is bread baked a second time until dry and hard, then crushed. Zwieback, plain dried breadcrumbs or crushed unsweetened melba toast all stand in. The recipe notes it can be left out, in which case the pudding is denser and much richer.
- Nut mill and mortarA food processor does both jobs, but pulse in short bursts. Ground nuts pass from meal to nut butter in seconds, and an oily paste will not hold the air from the whites.
- The flavouring"A little lemon" is unspecified. The zest of one lemon is the safe reading; if you use lemon extract instead, add it drop by drop.
- The basinGrease a heatproof pudding basin, fill no more than two-thirds, and cover with pleated parchment or foil tied under the rim so condensation cannot run in. Stand it on a trivet or folded cloth in a covered pan of simmering water reaching halfway up, and top the water up as it goes.
- Folding the whitesFour stiff whites will collapse considerably when worked into six ounces each of three ground nuts. Fold in a third first to loosen the mass, then the rest; the aim is a lighter texture, not a mousse.
- Seasoning and yieldAs written there is no salt and no sugar, which will read flat to a modern palate. It gives roughly six to eight servings, and it slices more cleanly cold than hot.
This comes from the run of vegetarian cookbooks published on both sides of the Atlantic around the turn of the twentieth century, when meatless cooking was tied to health reform movements and nuts were promoted as the direct nutritional substitute for meat. The steamed basin pudding was the obvious vessel: every kitchen had one, and a savoury nut mixture could be treated exactly like a suet pudding without the suet. The pine nuts are the luxury note, imported and comparatively costly.