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Fruit (Apples golden and Dutch) (II)
Apples (golden and Dutch pippins), grapes, medlars, nuts, oranges, pears (Bon Chrétien), walnuts.
Marrow Pudding, Baked or Boiled. INGREDIENTS. pint of breadcrumbs, 1½ pint of milk, 6 oz. of marrow, 4 eggs, lb. of raisins or currants, or 2½ oz. of each; sugar and grated nutmeg to taste. in- Make the milk boiling, pour it hot on to the bread-crumbs and let these remain covered for about 1/2 hour; shred the marrow, beat up the eggs and mix these with the bread-crumbs; add the remaining gredients, beat the mixture well and either put it into a buttered mould and boil it for 2½ hours, or put it into a pie-dish edged with puff-paste and bake it for rather more than hour. Before sending it to table, sift a little pounded sugar over, after being turned out of the mould or basin.
TIME.-2 hours to boil, hour to bake.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A Victorian boiled or baked bread pudding enriched with beef bone marrow rather than suet or butter. It can be made today, though the marrow needs planning and several of the quantities in this printing have lost their fractions.
- MarrowThis means beef bone marrow, scooped from split leg or shin bones — ask a butcher for marrow bones, and expect to need more than one to reach 6 oz. Chill the bones, push the marrow out whole, then shred or chop it cold; it melts at a low temperature and turns to grease if worked warm.
- Ambiguous quantitiesThe breadcrumb measure and the raisin weight have both lost their fractions in this printing. The alternative the recipe itself gives — 2 oz raisins and 2 oz currants — points to a single-fruit quantity of about 1/4 lb, and is the lighter version of the two.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no oven setting. A moderate oven, around 350F/180C, for rather more than an hour suits a pudding of this type; bake until the centre is just set and no longer liquid when the dish is tilted.
- Boiling the mouldButter the mould well, fill it no more than three-quarters, and cover it tightly with buttered paper and foil or a floured cloth before lowering it into simmering water. Keep the water at a bare simmer and topped up to two-thirds the height of the mould for the full 2 hours.
- Soaking the crumbsThe half-hour standing time with the boiling milk is not optional padding — it lets the crumbs swell and dissolve so the finished pudding is smooth rather than gritty. Cool the mixture a little before the eggs go in or they will scramble.
- Puff-paste edgeThe strip of puff pastry around the rim of the pie-dish is decorative and gives something crisp against the custard. Bought all-butter puff, cut in a band and pressed onto the buttered rim, does the job.
- Turning outLet a boiled pudding stand five minutes in its mould before inverting, or it will slump. The recipe has the pounded sugar sifted over after it is turned out, just before it goes to table.
- YieldEnough for 6 to 8 as a dessert. It is very rich; small portions with a plain pouring cream or a sharp fruit compote suit it better than a sauce.
Marrow was a standard enriching fat in English sweet cookery long before Mrs Beeton, appearing in marrow puddings, marrow tarts and mince pies from the seventeenth century onward, when the whole animal was expected to be used and the soft fat inside the leg bones was prized as the most delicate of all. By the later Victorian period suet and butter had largely displaced it in the domestic kitchen, and recipes such as this one survived partly as a matter of tradition and partly because marrow bones were cheap. The list of golden and Dutch pippins, medlars, Bon Chretien pears and walnuts that opens the page belongs to Beeton's month-by-month tables of what to put on the dessert dishes he the the pippins had mellowed in store and the medlars had been left to blet.