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Orange Puffs
1/3 cup butter 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 1/2 cup milk 1¾ cups flour 3 teaspoons baking powder Mix same as Cottage Pudding, and bake in buttered individual tins. Serve with Orange Sauce. 1/4 cup butter 1 cup sugar Yolks 2 eggs 1/2 cup milk 13% cups flour
A plain creamed butter cake batter baked in small tins and sauced with orange. The method referenced, Cottage Pudding, means cream butter and sugar, beat in the eggs, then add the sifted dry ingredients alternately with the milk.
- The flour quantityThe figure printed as "134 cups" is one and three-quarter cups; the fraction has closed up in printing. With 1/2 cup milk and 1/3 cup butter that gives a thick, spoonable batter, not a pourable one.
- OvenNo oven direction of any kind is given in the recipe as printed. For small individual tins, roughly 375F for 20 to 25 minutes, until a straw comes out clean and the tops spring back.
- "Individual tins"Standard muffin cups are the closest modern equivalent, filled about two-thirds. Old individual pudding or gem tins were often deeper and narrower.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons to 1 3/4 cups flour is high by current standards; period powders were single-acting. Two teaspoons of modern double-acting powder may give a better crumb.
- Butter and saltThe recipe lists no salt. If using unsalted butter, add 1/4 teaspoon salt with the flour.
- Orange SauceThe sauce is a separate entry in the same book, not given here. Without it these are simply small plain cakes, so make the sauce first and keep it warm.
- YieldAbout 10 to 12 standard muffin-sized puffs. Serve warm, straight from the tins, as the crumb tightens as it cools.
Cottage Pudding, the parent recipe cross-referenced here, was one of the workhorses of the hot pudding chapter: a cheap creamed butter cake whose whole character came from the sauce poured over it, so the same batter reappears under different names as lemon, chocolate, or orange. The pudding chapter's insistence on hot sauce reflects a period when dessert at the family dinner was expected to be substantial and warm.