Home › Puddings and Pudding Sauces › Queen Pudding
Queen Pudding
Two-thirds of a cup of butter, cup sugar, cup of flour, three eggs, one-half teaspoon baking powder, small glass of brandy. Rub to a smooth cream butter and eggs; add eggs, one at a time, beating few minutes after each addition; add flour sifted with powder, and brandy; put into mold well buttered, set in saucepan with boiling water to reach one-half up its sides; steam thus one and one-half hours; turn out on dish carefully; serve with lemon sauce.
A steamed sponge in the English manner, leavened with baking powder rather than long beating. Two things in the original need correcting before you start: an obvious typographical slip, and a measurement given in glasses.
- The text has a misprint"Rub to a smooth cream butter and eggs; add eggs, one at a time" cannot be right. Cream the butter with the sugar until pale and light, then add the eggs one at a time.
- A small glass of brandyPeriod American books reckon a wine glass at roughly 2 fluid ounces (a quarter cup), while a liqueur glass is smaller, nearer 1 ounce; "small glass" falls somewhere in that range. Either way it is a good deal of liquid for one cup of flour, and the batter will be loose, which suits a steamed pudding.
- Cup measuresTwo-thirds cup butter is about 5 1/3 oz (150 g), and the cup of flour should be scooped lightly and sifted with the powder as directed. No salt is called for; a pinch is worth adding if your butter is unsalted.
- The moldA 1-quart pudding basin or metal mold, well buttered, filled no more than two-thirds. Cover the top with buttered parchment or foil tied down, which the recipe omits — otherwise condensation from the lid drips in and the surface turns to paste.
- The steamWater halfway up the sides, lid on the saucepan, kept at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil. Check the level after 45 minutes and top up with boiling water; a pan that boils dry will scorch the mold and the pudding with it.
- DonenessOne and a half hours is realistic for a quart mold. A skewer into the center should come out clean and the pudding should have pulled slightly from the sides. Let it stand five minutes before turning out or it may slump.
- Lemon sauceThe recipe assumes a sauce given elsewhere in the book. The usual period formula is sugar thickened with cornstarch or flour and cooked with water until clear, with butter, lemon juice and zest added off the heat. Make it while the pudding steams and serve both hot.
- YieldSix modest servings. Steamed puddings reheat well — return the covered mold to the steamer for 20 minutes.
Do not confuse this with Queen of Puddings, the English breadcrumb-and-jam dish under a meringue; this is a steamed brandy sponge. Steamed puddings of this type suited a kitchen where the stovetop was more reliable than the oven, and a covered mold in a pan of simmering water gave an even, forgiving heat that a wood- or coal-fired oven often could not. The technique needs no baking judgment and produces something festive from cupboard staples -- a cup each of sugar and flour, two-thirds cup of butter. The brandy is doing double duty as flavor and as moisture, a reminder that spirits were an ordinary baking ingredient in American homes before Prohibition.