Potato Pudding
INGREDIENTS for pudding for 5 or 6 persons.- 1/2 lb. of mashed potatoes, 2 oz. of butter, 2 eggs, 1/4 pint of milk, 3 tablespoonfuls of sherry, 1/8 saltspoonful of salt, the juice and rind of POTATO RISSOLES. 1 small lemon, 2 oz. of sugar. AVERAGE COST, 8d.
Boil sufficient potatoes to make 1/2 lb. when mashed; add to these the butter, eggs, milk, sherry, lemon-juice and sugar; mince the lemon-peel very finely, and beat all the ingredients well together. Put the pudding into a buttered pie-dish, and bake for rather more than 1/2 hour. To enrich it, add a few pounded almonds, and increase the quantity of eggs and butter.
TIME. hour, or rather longer.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A sweet baked pudding built on mashed potato, closer to a lemon cheesecake filling than to anything savoury. It is simple work, but a few of the quantities and terms need translating.
- Quantities in modern termsHalf a pound of mashed potato is about 1 1/4 cups packed, from roughly 10 oz of raw floury potatoes. A quarter pint is 5 fl oz (about 2/3 cup) in British measure; 2 oz butter is 4 tablespoons, 2 oz sugar about 1/4 cup.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is usually reckoned at about a quarter teaspoon, so an eighth of one is a barely visible pinch. A pinch is all that is wanted; do not agonise over it.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. Bake at 350F for 35-40 minutes, until set at the edges with a slight tremble at the centre. A deep pie dish of about 1 1/2 pints suits the volume.
- The potato must be dry and smoothThis is the hinge. Boil or steam floury potatoes, drain thoroughly, and dry them in the pan over low heat before mashing; then pass them through a ricer or sieve. Wet or lumpy potato gives a heavy, watery pudding that never sets cleanly.
- Mix while warm, but add eggs off the heatBeat the butter into the hot potato so it melts in, then let the mixture cool to lukewarm before the eggs go in, or they will scramble in threads through the batter.
- Lemon rind"Mince the lemon-peel very finely" means the yellow zest only, no white pith. A fine grater or Microplane does in seconds what the original expects of a knife.
- The sherryThree tablespoons of sherry in a pudding this size is assertive; a medium or cream sherry suits it. It can be left out, in which case add a further tablespoon of milk.
- Yield and servingFive or six modest portions. Serve warm rather than hot, plain or with cream; it firms considerably as it cools and slices better the next day.
Sweet potato puddings were standard English baking, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century books are full of them: mashed root, butter, eggs, sugar, sack or sherry, and lemon, baked in a dish or a pastry case. The formula sits alongside the carrot and marrow puddings of the same books, and one might read all of them as ways of stretching eggs and butter with a cheap starchy bulk while keeping the result rich enough for a company table, though that is inference rather than anything the books say. The listed average cost of 8d places it firmly among the economical sweets of the Beeton canon, and the closing note that it is "seasonable at any time" may well reflect the fact that potatoes kept in the clamp all winter, when fruit for a pudding did not.