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Currant Pudding, Lemon Sauce
Made by adding one pound of either of those or other suitable fruit to the preparation. The fruit must be strewn over the top after the puddings are in the pans; they sink to the bottom if stirred in. Pass a spoon over to press the fruit slightly under, otherwise it comes out in black blisters. There is as much in careful baking as skillful making.
Another use of the same mixture is for
This is a variation rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes the batter given in the entry above it, and the lemon sauce named in the title is handled elsewhere in the book. What it does contain is one genuinely useful piece of bakery technique.
- The hinge: fruit goes on top, not inScatter the pound of fruit over the filled pans and press it just below the surface with the back of a spoon. Fruit stirred into the batter migrates to the bottom; fruit left sitting proud on the surface comes out as the "black blisters" the author warns about.
- Which currantsIn an American pastry book of this period "currants" most often means dried Zante currants, the small dried grape, rather than the fresh red or black berries. A pound is roughly 3 cups. If you use fresh berries instead, the extra moisture will slacken the batter and lengthen the bake.
- "The preparation"The mixture referred to is a batter given elsewhere in the book and not reproduced here. The thinner the batter, the harder it will be to keep the fruit near the surface.
- Pans and ovenThe recipe specifies neither pan nor oven heat. The author's remark that "there is as much in careful baking as skillful making" is the operative instruction: a fruited pudding darkens on top before the centre sets if the oven runs hot.
- ScaleA pound of fruit and the plural "pans" point to a batch larger than a single household pudding. Scale the fruit to the batter you actually have rather than to this figure.
- The lemon sauceNo sauce method is given on this page. A common version of the period is a thickened sugar syrup finished with lemon juice, zest and a lump of butter, served warm over the cut pudding.
Jessup Whitehead wrote for working hotel and restaurant cooks in Chicago in the 1880s and 90s, and his books read like shop notes rather than domestic instruction: one base mixture is spun out into further puddings by changing what is strewn over the top, which is why this entry begins mid-thought and ends mid-sentence pointing at the next use of the same batter. Boiled and baked fruit puddings with a sweet lemon sauce were staples of the American hotel dinner card, cheap to produce in quantity and easy to vary daily.