Home › L › Lemon Pudding, Baked (INGREDIENTS for pudding)
Lemon Pudding, Baked (INGREDIENTS for pudding)
INGREDIENTS for pudding sufficient for 6 persons.-4 eggs, 4 oz. of pounded sugar, 1 lemon, 3 oz. of butter, puff-paste. AVERAGE COST, 1s.
Beat the eggs to a froth; mix with them the sugar and warm butter; stir these ingredients well together, putting in the grated rind and strained juice of the lemonpeel. Line a shallow dish with puff-paste; THE LEMON. put in the mixture and bake in a moderate oven for 40 minutes; turn the pudding out of the dish, strew over it sifted sugar and serve.
TIME.-40 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
This is a lemon curd baked in a pastry case rather than a pudding in the steamed sense. The whole success of it rests on keeping the egg mixture below the point where it scrambles.
- Stray captionThe words "THE LEMON." in the middle of the method are the caption of an engraving that sat beside the text in the original page. They are not an instruction.
- Moderate ovenBake at 350F (180C). If the pastry is browning fast before the filling has set, drop to 325F rather than shortening the time.
- Warm butter, not hotMelt the 3 oz (6 tablespoons) of butter and let it cool to barely warm before it meets the beaten eggs. Poured in hot it will cook the eggs into threads and no amount of stirring will bring them back.
- Pounded sugarPounded sugar is caster or superfine sugar; 4 oz is about half a cup. Granulated works but dissolves more slowly, so give the mixture an extra minute of beating.
- The lemonGrate the zest before juicing. One lemon gives roughly a tablespoon of zest and 2 to 3 tablespoons of juice, which is a mild filling by modern taste; a second lemon's juice will make it sharper, though the extra liquid may slacken the set.
- Line and blind-bakeA shallow dish means something like an 8-inch tin about an inch deep. Because the filling is wet and the pudding is turned out whole, blind-bake the puff paste until dry and pale gold before filling, or the base will stay raw.
- Turning it outUse a loose-bottomed tin or a well-buttered metal dish and let the pudding stand 10 minutes before inverting. Straight from the oven the curd is still fluid and will break the case.
- Judging the setForty minutes is about right, but go by the centre: it should wobble as one piece, not ripple. Overbaked, the eggs weep and the surface cracks.
- YieldSix small servings, as stated. It is rich enough that a thin wedge with the sifted sugar on top is the intended portion.
Lemon puddings of this kind — eggs, sugar, butter and lemon beaten together and baked in pastry — run through English cookery books from the eighteenth century onward, and are often said to stand behind both bottled lemon curd and the modern lemon tart; the same mixture stirred in a pan rather than baked is essentially curd. The note "seasonable at any time" is worth reading closely: by the mid-nineteenth century Mediterranean lemons reached British ports in sufficient quantity and over enough of the year that a household cook could count on one, which was not true of most fruit in the book. The average cost is given as one shilling, the expense being almost entirely the eggs and butter.