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Cabinet, or Chancellor's Pudding
INGREDIENTS for pudding large enough for 6 persons.-1 1/2 oz. of candied peel, 4 oz. of currants, a handful of sultanas, a few slices of Savoy cake, sponge cake, or French roll, 4 eggs, 1 pint milk, grated lemon-rind, 1/1 nutmeg, 3 tablespoonfuls of sugar. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 3d.
Melt some butter to oil, and with it, well grease the mould or basin in which the pudding is to be boiled, taking care that it is buttered in every part. Cut the peel into thin slices, and place these in a fanciful device at the bottom of the mould, and fill in the spaces between with currants and sultanas; then add a few slices of sponge cake or French roll; drop a few drops of melted butter on these, and between each layer sprinkle a few currants.
Proceed in this manner until the mould is nearly full; then flavour the milk with nutmeg and grated lemon-rind; add the sugar, and stir to this the eggs, which should be well beaten. Beat this mixture for a few minutes; then strain it into the mould, which should be quite full; tie a piece of buttered paper over it, and let it stand for 2 hours; then tie it down with a cloth, put it into boiling water, and let it boil slowly for 1 hour. In taking it up, let it stand for a minute or two before the CAFE AU LAIT. cloth is removed; then quickly turn it out of the mould or basin, and serve with sweet sauce separately. The flavouring of this pudding may be varied by substituting for the lemon-rind essence of vanilla or bitter almonds; and it may be made much ticher by using cream; but this is not at all necessary.
TIME.-1 hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Café au Lait. - This is merely very strong coffee added to a large proportion of good hot milk; about 6 tablespoonfuls of strong coffee being quite sufficient for a breakfastcupful of milk. Of the essence, which answers admirably for café au lait, so much would not be required. This preparation is infinitely superior to the weak watery coffee so often served at English tables. A little cream mixed with the milk, if the latter cannot be depended on for richness, improves the taste of the coffee, as also the richness of the beverage.
CAKE, GOOD HOLIDAY. the cake into a buttered mould or tin, place it in a moderate oven immediately, and bake it from 1 to 24 hours.
TIME.-1 to 24 hours.
Cake, Common. (Suitable for sending to Children at School.) - INGREDIENTS for large cake.-2 lbs. of flour, 4 oz. of butter or clarified dripping, 1/4 oz. of caraway seeds, oz. of allspice, lb. of pounded sugar, 1 lb. of currants, 1 pint of milk, 3 tablespoonfuls of fresh yeast. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 7d.
Rub the butter lightly into the flour; add all the dry ingredients, and mix these well together. Make the milk warm, but not hot; stir in the yeast, and with this liquid mix the whole into a light dough; knead it well, and line the cake tins with strips of buttered paper; this paper should be about 6 inches higher than the top of the tin. Put in the dough; stand it in a warm place to rise for more than an hour, then bake the cakes in a well-heated oven. If this quantity be divided into two, they will take from 1 to 2 hours baking.
TIME.-1 to 2 hours.
Café Noir. This is usually handed round after dinner, and should be drunk well sweetened, with the addition of a little brandy or liqueurs, which may be added or not at pleasure. The coffee should be made very strong, and served in very small cups, but never mixed with milk or cream. Café noir may be made of the essence of coffee by pouring a table-pint of milk. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 3d. spoonful into each cup, and filling it up with boiling water. This is a very simple and expeditious manner of preparing coffee for a large party, but the essence for it must be made very good, and kept well • corked until required for use.
A steamed bread-and-butter pudding built upside down in a mould, so the fruit pattern becomes the top when it is turned out. Nothing here is difficult, but two things decide whether it succeeds: the soaking time and the gentleness of the boil.
- The hinge: let it stand two hoursThe standing time is not optional padding. The dry cake or roll must drink up the custard before heat reaches it, or the pudding cooks in layers, with a soggy seam of egg at the base and dry crumb above.
- Boil means gentle simmerSet the covered mould on a trivet or folded cloth in a pan of water reaching two-thirds up its side, and keep the water at a bare tremble. A hard boil risks curdling the custard, and it will weep when turned out. The recipe's hour applies to a mould of the size this quantity fills; test with a skewer, which should come out clean.
- A quantity that reads oddlyThe peel is 1 1/2 oz., as the page gives it, and 4 eggs to 1 pint of milk is a sound custard ratio. The nutmeg still stands as "1/1 nutmeg", which cannot be recovered from this text; use a small quantity, about half a nutmeg grated.
- A pint is 20 fl ozMrs Beeton's pint is the imperial one, so 1 pint is about 2.4 US cups. Use whole milk; the recipe's own note that cream makes it richer but is unnecessary is accurate.
- Savoy cake, sponge cake, French rollSavoy cake was a stiff whisked sponge baked in a fluted mould; any plain sponge, madeira cake or brioche does the same work. A "French roll" is a small enriched white roll, closer to brioche than to a baguette. Slightly stale is better than fresh.
- Buttered paper, then clothThe paper keeps the surface from drying during the two-hour soak; the cloth tied over the top keeps condensation out during boiling. A disc of baking parchment under a sheet of foil, crimped tightly round the rim, replaces both.
- The almond variationWhere the recipe offers essence of bitter almonds, use modern almond extract; commercial extracts are made either from bitter almond oil or from synthetic benzaldehyde. Bitter almonds themselves are hard to buy for kitchen use in some countries, including the United States.
- Sweet sauceServe with a thin pouring custard, or with sugar, butter and a spoonful of brandy or sherry beaten warm. Sending it separately, as directed, keeps the moulded shape clean on the plate.
The name points at its social standing rather than any cabinet or chancellor: an elaborately moulded pudding of candied peel, dried fruit and enriched cake, meant to come to table looking deliberately arranged. Victorian cookery writers used both titles interchangeably, and Mrs Beeton's version sits among a long family of steamed puddings built in a buttered basin and inverted, of which this is the dressiest and the least filling. What marks it as a household rather than a confectioner's dish is the frugality inside the display: stale sponge or yesterday's roll, currants, and a plain egg custard, boiled in the mould rather than baked, priced here at one shilling and threepence. The fanciful device of peel slices at the bottom of the mould is the whole point of the recipe, and the reason it merited a place in a book aimed at cooks who had to make a modest dinner look considered.