Paradise Pudding
INGREDIENTS for pudding for 4 persons.-3 eggs, 3 apples, lb. of bread-crumbs, 3 oz. of sugar, 3 oz. of currants, salt and grated nutmeg to taste, the rind of 1/2 lemon, 1/2 wineglassful of brandy. AVERAGE COST, 10d.
Pare, core and mince the apples into small pieces, and mix them with the other ingredients; beat up the eggs, moisten the mixture with these, and beat it well; stir in the brandy, and put the pudding into a buttered mould; tie it down with a cloth, boil for 1½ hour, and serve with sweet sauce.
TIME.-1½ hour.
Parsley and Butter (to serve with Calf's Head, Boiled Fowls, &c.). - INGREDIENTS for sauce for large fowl.-2 tablespoonfuls of minced parsley, pint of melted butter. AVERAGE COST, 4d.
Put into a saucepan a small quantity of water, slightly salted, and, when it boils, throw in a good bunch of parsley which has been previously washed and tied together in a bunch; let it boil for 5 minutes, drain it, mince the leaves very fine, and put the above quantity in a tureen; pour over it pint of smoothly-made melted butter; stir once, that the ingredients may be thoroughly mixed, and serve.
TIME.-5 minutes to boil the parsley.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A steamed suet-free fruit pudding of the plainest Victorian type, leaning on apple and egg rather than flour for body. It needs a few decisions the original leaves open.
- The breadcrumb quantityThe weight of breadcrumbs has lost its fraction in this text, but the unit given is "lb.", so the missing figure is a fraction of a pound; 1/4 lb (4 oz, roughly 2 cups of fresh soft crumbs) is the most likely reading and works with three apples and three eggs.
- Use fresh crumbs, not driedVictorian breadcrumbs meant soft crumb rubbed from a stale but not hard loaf. Packaged dry crumbs absorb far more moisture and will give a dense, gritty pudding.
- ApplesThe recipe gives no weight. Assume ordinary cooking apples and reckon on somewhere around 12 oz of prepared fruit. A firm tart variety holds its shape; a soft one collapses into the crumb, which is not fatal but changes the texture.
- Cooking timeThe two times given here disagree. For a mould of this size, steam or boil a full 1 1/2 hours; an hour leaves the centre wet.
- Mould and clothButter a pudding basin of about 2 pints, fill it no more than three-quarters, and cover with pleated parchment and foil tied down with string rather than a bare cloth. Stand it on a trivet or folded cloth in a pan of simmering water reaching halfway up the basin, and top up with boiling water as it drops.
- Half a wineglassfulA Victorian wineglass is about 2 fl oz, so this is roughly 2 tablespoons of brandy. The alcohol will not fully cook off in a steamed pudding.
- Sweet sauceThe text specifies nothing beyond "sweet sauce". A sweetened melted-butter sauce, flavoured with wine or lemon, is the usual sense in this period; a pouring custard also serves. The pudding is dry enough to need one.
- YieldFour servings, as stated, and best turned out and served straight from the basin while hot.
Paradise pudding belongs to the large family of English boiled puddings built on breadcrumbs, dried fruit and whatever fresh fruit the season offered, a dish that could go into the pot alongside the day's other cooking. The name is often said to be simple confectioner's flattery rather than a reference to any place or person; eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cookery is full of such names attached to unremarkable sweet dishes. Its appearance in Beeton with an average cost of tenpence is characteristic of the book's method, which prices receipts so that a mistress running a household could budget the week in advance.