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Steamed Yam Pudding
1 pound of potato. 1/4 pound of butter. 2 ounces of flour. 3 ounces of sugar. 8 yolks of eggs. 4 whites. 1/4 cup of brandy. Vanilla flavoring. Pare and boil the yam or sweet potatoes in salted water. Mash the required amount through a strainer. Add all the ingredients except the whites, beat well, whip the whites to a froth and stir in gently. Steam in two small moulds 1 hour. Lemon syrup sauce.
A rich sweet-potato pudding in the French dessert style, lightened with beaten whites and steamed rather than baked. Almost everything here is straightforward; the two places it can go wrong are the moisture of the potato and the folding of the whites.
- "Yam" means sweet potatoIn American cookbooks of this period yam and sweet potato are used interchangeably, and the ingredient list calling for "1 pound of potato" refers to the same thing. Use orange-fleshed sweet potatoes; a true tropical yam (Dioscorea) is starchy, dry and will give a heavy, pasty pudding.
- Weigh after cookingThe pound is best taken as a pound of mash, measured after boiling and sieving, which is roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb of raw potato. Drain the boiled pieces well and let them steam dry for a minute before pressing them through the strainer, or the extra water will slacken the batter.
- The egg count is deliberateThe egg count -- Eight yolks to only four whites is likely intentional rather than a slip: the yolks carry the richness and the four whites are there for lift. Keep the spare whites for the sauce or a meringue rather than adding them here.
- Fold, do not stirWhip the whites only to a soft froth, as the recipe says, rather than stiff and dry, and cut them into the potato mixture in two or three additions. Let the base cool to lukewarm first; if it is still hot the whites will deflate and the pudding will steam dense.
- Measures in modern terms1/4 lb butter is 1 stick (4 oz); 2 oz flour is a scant 1/2 cup; 3 oz sugar is about 7 tablespoons (a scant 1/2 cup); 1/4 cup brandy is 60 ml. "Vanilla flavoring" is best read as about a teaspoon of extract.
- The moulds and the steamerThe recipe does not specify a size; two vessels of about a pint each suit the quantity. Butter them well, dust with sugar, and fill only two-thirds full to leave room for rise. Cover each with buttered paper or foil, stand them on a rack in a deep pan, and add boiling water to reach halfway up the sides; keep it at a bare simmer and top up with boiling water as needed.
- Testing after the hourAn hour is right for pint moulds. The pudding should be set to the centre and spring back to a light touch; a skewer will come out clean but slightly moist. Rest five minutes before turning out, or the crumb tears.
- Lemon syrup sauce and yieldThe sauce is presumably a simple sugar syrup boiled with lemon juice and zest, poured over hot; a spoonful of the brandy in it would be in keeping. No yield is given; the two moulds should serve six or so.
The American Pastry Cook belongs to the professional hotel-and-restaurant tradition, and this is a steamed pudding in the French manner with sweet potato in place of a more usual chestnut or bread base. Sweet potatoes had long been a staple of Southern cookery, sweet and savoury alike, and the sieved pulp lends itself to much the same treatment as chestnut puree: enriched with butter and yolks, loosened with spirit, lightened with whipped whites. The loose use of "yam" for sweet potato is itself a piece of period evidence; the word is generally traced to West African languages and came into American English in the context of the slave trade, and it stuck to the orange-fleshed sweet potato so firmly that produce markets still use it today. The brandy and the lemon syrup sauce mark the dish as a dessert for the dining room rather than a family supper pudding.