Coburg Puddings
INGREDIENTS for puddings sufficient for 7 or 8 persons.--1 pint new milk, 6 oz. of sugar, 6 oz. of flour, 6 oz. of butter, 6 oz. of currants, brandy and other flavouring to taste. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 9d.
Mix the flour and milk to a smooth batter, add the remaining ingredients very gradually, and when well mixed put it into 8 cups, previously buttered, half full and bake for 3/4 of an hour. Turn the puddings out on a dish, strew over a little sifted sugar and serve with wine sauce.
TIME.- hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A plain steamed-style batter pudding baked in cups, of the kind that filled the middle of a Victorian dinner. The method is straightforward; the details that trip people up are the vessels, the oven and the sauce.
- The cupsEight buttered cups; the book does not state a size. Ovenproof moulds work: darioles, ramekins or a deep muffin tin. Fill only half full, as directed, or the batter climbs and the puddings will not turn out cleanly.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the book assumes a coal range. Bake at 350F (180C) for the stated three-quarters of an hour; the puddings should be risen, set to the centre and just shrinking from the sides.
- Making the batterThe recipe directs mixing the flour and milk to a smooth batter first, then adding the remaining ingredients very gradually. If the butter is hard, soften or cream it before it goes in: cold milk against solid butter gives a curdled, lumpy mix that bakes heavy.
- CurrantsNineteenth-century currants arrived gritty and stalked and needed washing and drying. Modern dried currants need only a light toss in a spoonful of the flour so they do not sink to what becomes the top of the turned-out pudding.
- Brandy and flavouringRoughly a tablespoon of brandy suits this quantity; grated lemon rind or a little nutmeg is a common companion. More liquid than that will slacken the batter.
- Wine sauceThe period sauce is a thin sweet sauce of sherry or Madeira thickened with a little butter and flour or with egg yolk, sweetened and warmed but never boiled. A custard or a simple lemon syrup serves the same purpose.
- Yield and costEight small puddings, given as sufficient for seven or eight people. The 1s. 9d. is a pre-decimal shopping note from the period and carries no useful modern equivalent.
- Turning outLet the puddings stand two or three minutes out of the oven before inverting. Straight from the heat they are fragile; left much longer they stick.
Coburg puddings are generally traced to the wave of English dishes said to have been renamed in honour of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha after his marriage to Victoria in 1840 -- Coburg loaves, Coburg cakes and Coburg puddings all appear in cookery books of the following decades, and the name generally signals a small round baked cake or pudding turned out of a mould rather than any German original. The formula here is the standard Victorian baked batter pudding, equal weights of flour, butter, sugar and dried fruit slackened with milk, a pattern that also produces castle puddings with only small changes. They were served in individual cups with sifted sugar and a wine sauce.