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Aunt Polly's Pudding
eggs, 1/2 wineglassful of brandy, a few drops. INGREDIENTS for pudding for 4 or 5 persons.-A teacupful each of golden syrup, raisins, bread-crumbs and flour, 4 sponge cakes, 2½ eggs, ½ wineglassful of brandy, a few drops of orange-flower water, a little minced candied peel. AVERAGE COST, 18. candied peel. AVERAGE COST, 1s.
Mix well, then beat all together and pour into a buttered mould. Steam the pudding for 2½ hours, and serve with wine or sweet sauce.
TIME.-2 hours to steam the pudding.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A steamed suet-free pudding held together by breadcrumbs, flour and syrup. The text as printed contains an obvious typesetting error that has to be resolved before you start.
- Steaming timeThe method calls for 2½ hours of steaming, while the TIME line below gives 2 hours. A mould of this size is cooked through in about two hours of steady steaming, so check it at that point and give it the extra half-hour only if needed.
- The teacupfulA Victorian teacup is variously reckoned at a quarter to a third of a pint, so somewhere around 5 to 7 fl oz. Since four of the five main quantities are measured this way, use the same cup throughout and the proportions stay right whatever its exact size.
- Golden syrupStill sold under the same name in Britain; a light amber cane syrup with a distinct flavour of its own. Warm it slightly so it blends rather than sitting in ropes through the crumbs.
- Sponge cakesThese most likely mean small individual sponges of the finger or savoiardi type rather than slices from a large cake. Four of them, crumbled, add perhaps a cup of dry crumb; stale plain sponge or ladyfingers will do in their place.
- Orange-flower water"A few drops" is meant literally. Modern orange-flower waters vary enormously in strength, and half a teaspoon in a pudding this size is already assertive.
- ConsistencyBeyond the syrup, two eggs and a wineglass of brandy (about 2 fl oz) are all the moisture there is. If the mixture will not drop reluctantly from the spoon, loosen it with a spoonful or two of milk before it goes into the mould.
- The mouldButter it well and fill it no more than three-quarters full, then cover with pleated greased paper or foil tied down. Steam with the water coming halfway up the mould and top it up from the kettle as it drops.
- Yield and sauceFour to five servings, as stated. "Wine sauce" here is a thin sweet custard or a cornflour-thickened sauce flavoured with sherry or Madeira, served hot and poured over.
- The cost line"AVERAGE COST, 18." is a broken rendering of one shilling, the usual Beeton notation.
Puddings named after an aunt or a nurse are often said to be common in nineteenth-century English cookery books, and the name is generally taken to signal a plain family pudding rather than a chef's dish; whether any particular Aunt Polly stood behind this one is not recorded. What distinguishes it is what it lacks: no suet, no long boiling in a cloth, no dried-fruit weight beyond a teacupful of raisins. Golden syrup, refined from cane molasses and commercially available in Britain from the mid-1880s, serves here as the binding sweetener. The teacupful measure and the note that it is seasonable at any time both mark it as everyday cooking, meant to be assembled from things already in the house: leftover sponge cakes, stale bread, the peel jar and the brandy bottle.