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Batter Pudding with Raisins
1/2 pound of seedless raisins. 1 pound of flour. 1 quart of milk. 8 eggs, or 10 yolks, and powder. 4 ounces of butter, melted. 2 ounces of golden syrup. Salt Baking powder optional.
The pudding is made with the yolks of eggs. The whites are beaten to a firm froth and added last, or, if not so beaten, left out, and baking powder--1 teaspoonful--used instead. Make like the puddings preceding it.
This is a bakeshop formula written for someone who already knows the batter puddings on the preceding pages, so the method is compressed to almost nothing. The proportions themselves are sound and translate directly.
- The quantities in cupsOne pound of flour is about 3 1/2 to 4 cups of all-purpose, measured by scooping and levelling; weigh it if you can. A quart of milk is 4 cups, and 4 ounces of butter is one stick.
- "And powder"The stray word in the ingredient list means baking powder, spelled out later as one teaspoonful. It is an alternative to whipped whites, not an addition to them — use one or the other, not both.
- Golden syrupAn inverted cane syrup, pale amber and less assertive than molasses. Lyle's is still widely available; light corn syrup is the closest substitute, though it is blander. Two ounces is a scant 3 tablespoons.
- Whites or powderBeaten whites folded in last give a lighter, more soufflé-like pudding that settles as it cools. The baking powder version is sturdier and more reliable, which is presumably why the book offers it.
- "Make like the puddings preceding it"For a batter pudding this means: whisk the yolks with the milk, beat that into the flour and salt to a smooth batter, stir in the melted butter and syrup, fold in the raisins, and pour into a well-buttered baking dish. Let the batter stand 20 to 30 minutes before baking so the flour hydrates.
- OvenNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, 350°F, is right for a deep batter pudding of this size; it needs about an hour and is done when the centre is set and a knife comes out clean. A hotter oven browns the top before the middle cooks.
- Keeping the raisins suspendedToss the raisins in a spoonful of the measured flour before folding them in, or they will sink to the bottom of a batter this loose.
- YieldThis is a large batch — roughly 5 pounds of batter, enough for a large 9x13 dish and 12 to 16 servings. Halving it works without adjustment.
Batter puddings are the plainest branch of the English pudding family: flour, milk and eggs baked or boiled, with the same basic ratio that gives Yorkshire pudding and popovers, slackened with sugar or syrup and studded with fruit for the sweet versions. They were cheap, stretched a small amount of butter and dried fruit a long way, and could be scaled by the pound. Golden syrup -- refiners' inverted cane syrup -- was a British staple from the 1880s onward. The instruction to "make like the puddings preceding it" assumes a reader working through the section in order rather than opening the book at random.