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Semolina Pudding, Baked
INGREDIENTS for pudding for 6 persons.- 3 oz. of semolina, 1½ pint of milk, lb. of sugar, 12 bitter almonds, 3 oz. of butter, 4 eggs. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 2d.
Flavour the milk with the bitter almonds, by infusing them in it by the side of the fire for about 1/2 hour; then strain it, and mix with it the semolina, sugar and butter.
Stir these ingredients over the fire for a few minutes; then take them off, and gradually mix in the eggs, which should be well beaten. Butter a pie-dish, line the edges with puff-paste, put in the pudding, and bake in rather a slow oven from 40 to 50 minutes. Serve with custard sauce or stewed fruit, a little of which may be poured over the pudding.
TIME.-40 to 50 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
The problem here is the flavouring, not the pudding. Twelve bitter almonds infused in the milk put this recipe outside what can be safely made today.
- Bitter almondsBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nuts are crushed, chewed or steeped in warm liquid. Twelve of them steeped for half an hour in milk that is then eaten rather than discarded carries that cyanide into the dish, and baking cannot be relied on to drive all of it off. Raw bitter almonds are restricted for sale in the United States, and their use in food is limited by law in much of Europe, for this reason.
- Not a matter of quantityReducing the number of almonds is not a reliable fix, because amygdalin content varies from nut to nut. If you want an almond-scented milk pudding, use a current recipe written around sweet almonds or a commercial almond extract.
- "lb. of sugar"The fraction has dropped out of the text at some point in printing; a full pound would be absurd for 1½ pints of milk, and a few ounces is the likely reading. As printed, the amount is simply ambiguous.
- "Rather a slow oven""Rather a slow oven" is conventionally read as somewhere around 300-325F, though the book gives no temperatures. Baked custard-thickened puddings are set gently so the eggs do not curdle and weep.
- SemolinaSemolina is milled durum wheat endosperm. The recipe does not specify a grade, and Victorian semolina was sold in varying degrees of fineness. Three ounces to 1½ pints of milk gives a loose porridge that firms up with the eggs.
- Pie-dish lined with puff-pasteOnly the rim of the dish is lined, not the base, giving a decorative baked border rather than a pastry case. This is standard Victorian presentation for a wet pudding that would make a bottom crust sodden.
Bitter almonds were a standard Victorian source of almond flavour, and Beeton's books use them freely in blancmanges, ratafias, custards and puddings; the ratafia biscuit takes its name from the same almond-kernel flavouring. Nineteenth-century household and medical writing does discuss poisoning by prussic acid from almonds and cherry-laurel water, so the danger in quantity was known. Modern food regulation takes a different view, and the flavour now comes from benzaldehyde, either synthesised or extracted from stone fruit kernels under controlled conditions. By Beeton's time semolina sat alongside sago, tapioca, arrowroot and ground rice as one of the cheap milk-pudding starches that a household could keep dry in the store cupboard and turn into a nursery or family dish at any season -- hence "seasonable at any time."