Home › Recipes › Lemon Sponge Pudding

Lemon Sponge Pudding

A SOUFFLE TO BE SERVED WHOLE. 2 pounds of grated ripe apples. 1 pound of sugar. 2 ounces of butter. 4 lemons, grated rind of all, juice of 2. 1/2 cup of milk. 2 ounces of corn starch or flour. 16 eggs.

Make according to directions for the pineapple souffles. Bake in a silver dish or mould that will hold 3 quarts. Pin a band of buttered paper around the mould to make it higher. Fill with the lemon sponge mixture and bake about half an hour. Dredge vanilla flavored sugar on top in the oven. Take off the paper just before sending to the table. Sauce doree, or butter sauce with nutmeg or cream. It can of course be baked in individual style as well as the others.

In old times, a very long while ago, there lived a race of hotel cooks who ran in such a very little narrow rut, and had such very small resources in their trade that when they had made about three different puddings they were at their wit's end, and used to have to butt their heads against the wall to shake up their memories, so they would know what on earth to make next. Then they would recollect something to make which required almonds, raisins and citron; but when they ran to the hotel storeroom they found none of those articles in stock. Then they had to butt their heads against the wall again harder, till they could think of something else, and that would require apples. But the store room would be bare of apples also. And then they had to go and find a harder place in the wall and butt their heads against it harder and longer every time. That was in the dark ages. What charity it would have been, and what suffering it would have prevented if some person had stood up and told them what they might do in the case of a short storeroom. How if they had no bread they could use cake; if they had no yolks of eggs they could make a pudding of the whites; if they had no eggs at all nor milk they could do just as well with a pudding that would be ruined if even milk or eggs came near it; and if they had no pineapples they could do very well indeed with pumpkins.

Pumpkin pudding must be older than pumpkin pie, because pumpkin pie is pumpkin pudding over the water. The first appearance of pumpkin in history is in the story of a young person named Cinderella, who, finding her fine coach was changed again into nothing but a hateful pumpkin that came rolling up to the door, felt vexed, and thought she would make a pudding of it.