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Manchester Pudding (to eat Cold)
INGREDIENTS for pudding for 6 persons.-3 oz. of grated bread, 1/2 pint of milk, a strip of lemon-peel, 4 eggs, 2 oz. of butter, sugar to taste, puff-paste, jam, 3 tablespoonfuls of brandy. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 2d.
Flavour the milk with lemon-peel, by infusing it in the milk for 1/2 hour then strain it on to the bread-crumbs and boil it for 2 or 3 minutes; add the eggs, leaving out the whites of 2, the butter, sugar and brandy; stir all these ingredients well together; border a pie-dish with puff-paste and at the bottom put a thick layer of any kind of jam; pour the above mixture, cold, on the jam and bake the pudding for an hour. Serve cold, with a little sifted sugar sprinkled over.
TIME.-1 hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A Victorian baked bread-and-butter custard set over jam in a pastry-lined dish, meant to be cut cold. The instructions are workable once a few of the period's shorthands are unpacked.
- The hinge: cool the custard before it meets the jamThe recipe is explicit that the mixture goes on to the jam cold. Hot custard poured on to jam dissolves it into the mix and you lose the distinct layer of jam beneath the custard.
- Infusion timeThe lemon-peel is steeped in the milk for half an hour, and the milk is then strained on to the bread-crumbs. Use pared zest only, with no white pith, from an unwaxed lemon.
- Bread-crumbsThree ounces is roughly 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 cups of fresh soft white crumbs; the recipe specifies grated bread. Dried packaged crumbs absorb far more liquid and will give a stodgy, dense set.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as the book assumes a coal range. An hour suits a moderate oven, 350F, and the pudding is done when the centre is just set with a slight tremble. If the pastry border colours too fast, shield it with foil.
- EggsFour eggs, but discard two of the whites, so four yolks and two whites. Period eggs are generally reckoned to have been smaller than a modern large egg; medium eggs are the safer choice, or the custard may set firmer than intended.
- Pie-dish and pasteThe puff-paste is a decorative border round the rim, not a full lining; a strip of bought all-butter puff pressed round the dampened edge does the job. The recipe gives no dish size.
- Sugar and jam'Sugar to taste' is perhaps 2 to 3 oz in the custard, less if the jam is a sweet one. The recipe specifies any kind of jam, spread as a thick layer over the base.
- Yield and servingStated as six portions. Cool completely, then chill; it slices far more cleanly cold, and the sifted sugar should go on just before serving so it does not dissolve.
Manchester pudding belongs to a large family of Victorian bread-crumb custards baked over jam, close cousins to Queen of Puddings and manifestly built on the same economy: stale bread, milk, and a few eggs stretched into a dish that could be served at a middle-class table. The version here is the cold one, meant to be made ahead and cut in slices, which made it useful for suppers, picnics and the cold table. The name is traditionally attached to the city rather than to any documented originator, and Victorian cookery books routinely borrowed place-names for puddings in this way; Beeton's book gives the average cost, one shilling and twopence, because her readers were expected to budget a dish before they cooked it. The brandy is the one touch of extravagance in an otherwise thrifty formula.