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Lemon Pudding, Baked (INGREDIENTS for pudding) (II)
INGREDIENTS for pudding for 6 persons.- 10 oz. of bread-crumbs, 2 pints of milk, 2 oz. of butter, 1 lemon, lb. of pounded sugar, 4 eggs, 1 tablespoonful of brandy. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 4d.
Bring the milk to the boiling point, stir in the butter and pour these hot over the bread-crumbs; add the sugar and very finely-minced lemon-peel; beat the eggs and stir these in with the brandy to the other ingredients; put a paste round the dish and bake for hour.
TIME. hour.
SEASONABLE at any time, LEMON SAUCE.
Lemon Pudding, Baked. (Very Rich.) - INGREDIENTS for pudding for 6 persons. The rind and juice of 2 large lemons, 1/2 lb. of loaf sugar, 1/4 pint of cream, the yolks of 8 eggs, 2 oz. of almonds, lb. of butter, melted. AVERAGE COST, 2s. 6d.
Mix the pounded sugar with the cream and add the yolks of eggs and the butter, which should be previously warmed. Blanch and pound the almonds and put these, with the grated rind and strained juice of the lemons, to the other ingredients. Stir all well together; line a puff-paste, put in the mixture and bake for 1 hour.
TIME.-1 hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Two baked lemon puddings in the Victorian sense: a rich custard-type mixture poured into a pastry-lined dish, closer to a lemon tart than to a steamed pudding. Both are straightforward once the missing quantities and the pastry step are understood.
- Several quantities are incompleteThe sugar in the first pudding and the butter in the second have lost their fractions, as has the first pudding's baking time ("bake for ___ hour"); the second version states 1 hour plainly. Treat the printed figures as a guide rather than a measure.
- "Put a paste round the dish"This means a paste border round the rim and sides of the dish, not a covering lid. The second version is lined with puff paste. The book does not specify which paste for the first, nor a dish size.
- Oven heatNeither version states a temperature. A baked egg-and-cream mixture of this kind wants a moderate oven, 350F, so the custard sets without curdling; if the pastry needs colour, start at 400F for 10 minutes and drop the heat.
- The hinge: do not let the eggs scrambleIn the first pudding the milk is boiling when it meets the crumbs and butter. Let that mixture cool to warm before the beaten eggs go in, or you will have threads of cooked egg through the pudding.
- Butter "previously warmed"Melted but not hot. Hot butter poured into raw yolks can begin to set them; melt it gently and let it stand a minute first.
- Pounded almondsBlanched sweet almonds ground in a food processor stand in for pounding; 2 oz is roughly 1/2 cup whole. Grind with a spoonful of the sugar to stop them turning oily.
- Lemon peel"Very finely-minced lemon-peel" means the yellow zest only, no pith. A microplane does the work of the knife here.
- Yield and servingEach is stated for six. Both are rich, and best served warm rather than hot, with cream. The eight yolks in the second version leave whites over for meringue or macaroons.
Beeton's lemon puddings sit at the point where the medieval English "pudding" -- anything bound with eggs, crumbs or suet -- was giving way to the tart and the custard. The first version is the older idea: bread stretched with milk, enriched with butter and eggs, perfumed with lemon peel and a spoonful of brandy, and costed at 1s. 4d. because thrift was the point. The second, at nearly double the price, dispenses with crumbs altogether in favour of eight yolks, cream and pounded almonds, and is essentially the lemon curd tart of later cookery. Beeton's habit of printing a plain and a "very rich" version side by side, each with its average cost and its number of persons, is often said to have been one of the book's genuine innovations: it let a household choose its dish by its purse rather than by taste alone.