Home › Q › Quickly Made Pudding
Quickly Made Pudding
INGREDIENTS for 6 puddings. lb. of butter, 1/2 lb. of sifted sugar, 1/4 lb. of flour, 1 pint of milk, 4 eggs, a little grated lemon-rind.
AVERAGE COST, 1s.
Make the milk hot; stir in the butter, and let it cool before the other ingredients are added to it; then stir in the sugar, flour and eggs, which should be well whisked; flavour with a little grated lemonrind, and beat the mixture well. Butter some small cups, rather more than half fill them bake them 20 minutes to 1/2 hour, according to the size of the puddings, and serve with fruit, custard or wine-sauce, a little of which may be poured over them.
TIME.-20 minutes to hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A plain baked batter pudding of the kind Victorian kitchens turned out at short notice from storecupboard staples. The original text is missing at least one fraction and gives no oven temperature, so a little judgement is needed before you start.
- The butter quantity is missingThe line reads simply "lb. of butter" — the fraction has dropped out in printing. Given 1/2 lb sugar, 1/4 lb flour and a pint of milk, 1/4 lb (4 oz / 115 g) is the proportion that makes sense; a full pound would be absurd against 4 oz of flour.
- Weights1/2 lb sifted sugar is about 225 g (a generous cup), 1/4 lb flour about 115 g (scant cup). The pint is an imperial pint, 20 fl oz / 570 ml, not the US 16 oz.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A modern oven at about 350F (180C) suits; hotter and the egg-rich batter will rise and then collapse.
- Cool the milk properlyThis is the hinge. The milk is heated to melt the butter, and it must come back down to lukewarm before the eggs go in, or you will have sweet scrambled egg. Test it against your wrist rather than guessing.
- "Small cups"Dariole moulds, ramekins or a deep muffin tin, large enough that the batter divides between six at a little over half full. Butter them thoroughly, since the batter rises and then settles.
- Timing20 minutes suits small moulds, 30 for larger ones. They are done when set at the centre and just coming away at the edge; the tops brown lightly and the puddings sink a little as they cool, which is expected.
- Lemon rindGrate only the yellow zest; the white pith is bitter — take about half a lemon's worth for the full batch.
- Yield and servingSix puddings, turned out warm. Wine sauce here means a sweetened sauce thickened with a little flour or arrowroot and flavoured with sherry or madeira; a pouring custard or stewed fruit does the same job.
The Beeton household books are full of these "quickly made" or "plain" puddings, aimed at the cook who needed something at the end of a meal without a suet crust, a boiling cloth or three hours' notice. The average cost of one shilling for six is characteristic of Mrs Beeton's editorial habit of pricing every dish, a feature that made the original Book of Household Management useful to mistresses budgeting a week's meals rather than merely reading recipes. The mixture itself is essentially a rich baked batter, and the technique of scalding milk with butter, cooling it, then beating in eggs and flour is close to the base used for other baked batter puddings, depending on proportion and oven heat.