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Eve's Pudding
"If you want a good pudding, mind what you are taught. Take of eggs six in number, when bought for a groat; The fruit with which Eve her husband did cozen, Well pared and well chopped, at least half a dozen; Six ounces of bread; let Moll eat the crust, And crumble the rest, as fine as the dust; Six ounces of currants, from the stems you must sort, Lest you break out your teeth and spoil all the sport. Six ounces of sugar won't make it too sweet, Some salt and some nutmeg will make it complete; Three hours let it boil, without any flutter, But Adam won't like it without wine and butter."
A verse recipe of the old "everything by sixes" type: six eggs, six apples, six ounces each of breadcrumbs, currants and sugar, boiled three hours and sauced with wine and butter. The quantities are complete; only the vessel and the heat need translating.
- The hinge: "without any flutter"Usually read as keeping the water at a steady, unbroken simmer for the full three hours, though the phrase may equally mean simply "without interruption". Either way a hard rolling boil drives water past the cloth or lid and can boil the pan dry; keep a kettle going and top up with boiling water so the temperature never drops.
- "The fruit with which Eve her husband did cozen"Apples, at least half a dozen as the verse specifies, pared and chopped fine. Firm cooking apples hold their shape; a soft eating apple collapses to sauce and makes for a wetter pudding.
- Weights and the groatSix ounces is about 170 g, so roughly 3 cups of fresh breadcrumbs, 1 cup of currants and 3/4 cup of sugar. The groat was a fourpenny coin — a note on the price of eggs, not an instruction.
- "Let Moll eat the crust"Crusts are discarded and only the soft interior crumbed, which is why the pudding comes out fine-textured. Stale bread crumbs better than fresh; a day or two old is right.
- No suet, no flourNeither appears here, so the eggs and breadcrumbs are the only binder. Do not stretch the crumb quantity or the mixture will not hold together when turned out.
- Cloth or basinTraditionally boiled in a floured cloth, tied to allow some swelling. A buttered pudding basin of two quarts or more, covered with pleated parchment and foil, set on a trivet in a covered pan with water halfway up, is easier, though a steamed basin may want longer than the three hours the verse gives.
- CurrantsModern dried currants come cleaned, so the stem-sorting is largely done for you; a quick rinse and pick-over is still worth the minute.
- Wine and butterThe closing line asks only for wine and butter; this is commonly rendered as a wine sauce, butter and sugar creamed with a fortified wine, or melted into a warm pouring sauce.
- YieldServes six to eight, turned out hot. It reheats well by steaming for 30-40 minutes.
Eve's Pudding takes its name from the riddle in the first lines: the fruit is never named, only identified by Eden. Recipes in rhyme circulated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in almanacs, newspapers and household books, and this verse appears in many collections with small variations in wording. The "sixes" structure is what made it memorable -- six eggs, six apples, six ounces of bread, currants and sugar. The boiled pudding needs no oven, only a covered pot of simmering water, which a fire outdoors supplies as readily as a range. It should not be confused with the baked apple-and-sponge pudding sold under the same name today, which is a later use of the name.