Quaking Pudding
INGREDIENTS for pudding for 6 persons.-1 pint of milk, 1 pint of cream, 2 tablespoonfuls of flour. 4 eggs, sugar and flavouring to taste.
AVERAGE COST, 28.
Scald the cream and milk, and, when nearly cold, add the other ingredients; then pour in a buttered basin, tie a cloth over and boil for hour. Carefully turn out the pudding, and send fruit or wine sauce to table with it.
TIME. hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A boiled custard pudding of the plainest kind: dairy, eggs and a little flour, set in a basin over water. Its name comes from how it trembles when turned out, and that wobble depends entirely on gentle heat.
- Keep the water at a bare simmerThis is a custard, not a suet pudding. A rolling boil will curdle the eggs and give you a grainy, weeping pudding instead of one that quakes. The water should shiver, not bubble hard.
- Imperial pintsMrs Beeton's pint is 20 fl oz, so this is roughly 2 1/2 US cups each of milk and cream. Using US pints throughout will give a slightly firmer result, since the egg and flour stay the same against less liquid.
- Scalding the cream and milkBring the dairy to just below the boil, when steam rises and bubbles ring the edge, then cool it before adding the eggs. Adding eggs to hot milk without tempering scrambles them.
- The cooking timeThe stated time has lost its figure, though the surviving singular 'hour' points to one hour or a fraction of one. A pint-and-a-pint mixture in a covered basin may need longer than that at a simmer; test by inserting a knife near the centre, which should come out clean with only a slight tremble left.
- Basin and clothButter the basin generously and cover with pleated foil or baking parchment tied under the rim, in place of the cloth. The pleat allows the pudding to rise without splitting the cover. Stand the basin on a trivet or folded cloth so it does not sit on the pan base, with water halfway up the sides.
- FlavouringPeriod practice was grated nutmeg, lemon peel, orange-flower water or brandy. Infuse peel or a vanilla pod into the milk while scalding and strain it out before adding the eggs.
- Turning outLet the pudding stand five to ten minutes off the heat before inverting, or it will collapse. It is fragile by design; a wide, shallow dish makes the transfer easier.
- Sauce and yieldServes six as written. A wine sauce here means sweetened sherry or Madeira thickened lightly with butter and flour; a warm fruit compote or raspberry puree does the same job.
Quaking pudding is an English boiled pudding appearing in seventeenth-century receipt books well before Mrs Beeton, sometimes as "quakeing". The name describes the texture: a cream custard set with just enough egg and flour to hold its shape on the dish while still trembling when carried to table, which was the point of the exercise in a period that prized delicacy in sweet dishes. It belongs to the family of puddings boiled in a cloth or basin, a technique that let cooks make a sweet course over the same fire already occupied by the dinner. Beeton's printed costing, which appears garbled and has been read as a couple of shillings, reflects a dish whose expense lies almost entirely in the cream.