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Biscuit Pudding
897. Pour one pint of boiling milk on three penny Naples biscuits grated, cover it close; when cold, stir in the yolks of four and the whites of two eggs, a little brandy, half a spoonful of flour, and some sugar. Boil this an hour in a basin, and serve it with pudding-sauce; some almonds may be blanched and cut in four, and stuck over the pudding.
Another. Weigh two eggs, and take equal weight of flour and sugar, and a quarter of a pound of butter beaten to a cream; add the two eggs beaten, and mix well. This is sufficient for six small cups filled three parts full, bake them in a slow oven twenty minutes. Serve with wine sauce.
Two puddings under one number: a steamed sponge-and-custard pudding, and a small weighed-egg batter baked in cups. Both are workable, but the first depends on knowing what a Naples biscuit was and what "boil in a basin" means.
- Naples biscuitsThese were dry, finger-shaped sponge biscuits, close in character to Italian savoiardi or ladyfingers. Grated stale sponge fingers are a reasonable substitute; plain trifle sponges also work.
- "Three penny" biscuitsMost likely threepence-worth rather than a count, though the phrase can also be read as three penny biscuits; either way the quantity is not recoverable. For a pint of milk, aim at about 3 oz (85 g) of grated biscuit, which gives a soft set rather than a solid one.
- Boiling in a basinThe basin was set in boiling water rather than the mixture boiled directly; in modern terms, treat it as a steamed pudding. Butter a pudding basin, fill it no more than three-quarters, cover tightly with pleated foil or a floured cloth tied under the rim, and stand it on a trivet in a pan of simmering water reaching halfway up. Top up with boiling water as it falls.
- Why the milk is poured on firstSoaking the grated biscuit in boiling milk and covering it close swells the crumb completely. Adding the eggs only when it is cold is the hinge of the recipe: stir them into hot milk and they scramble.
- Egg proportionsFour yolks and two whites gives a richer, softer custard than four whole eggs. "Half a spoonful of flour" is probably about a teaspoon and a half, if the spoon intended is a tablespoon; it is little enough that it likely served mainly as insurance against curdling.
- The second pudding's proportionsWeighing against the eggs is the old pound-cake method. Two medium eggs in shell come to about 4 oz (110 g), so use 4 oz flour, 4 oz sugar and the stated 4 oz butter. Cream the butter and sugar, then beat in the eggs before folding in the flour.
- Slow ovenRead this as 300-325F (150-160C). Twenty minutes suits ramekins or dariole moulds filled three-quarters full; test with a skewer, as small cups overbake quickly.
- SaucesPudding sauce of this period is usually a sweetened white or butter sauce, sometimes flavoured with nutmeg or lemon; wine sauce is generally a similar base finished with wine. No sauce recipe accompanies this entry, so any standard sweet sauce serves.
- YieldThe steamed pudding will roughly fill a 1.5-pint basin and should serve about four to six. The baked version makes the six small cups the recipe specifies.
- The almond garnishBlanched almonds cut in quarters lengthwise and pressed point-first into the pudding, in the manner of the almond-spiked "hedgehog" dishes. Do it immediately after turning out, while the surface is still soft enough to hold them.
Naples biscuits appear constantly in British cookery from the late seventeenth century onward, less as a biscuit to eat than as a manufactured convenience: a dry sponge that could be bought by the pennyworth and grated into puddings, trifles and custards in place of breadcrumbs or fresh cake. That the book still specifies them by price rather than weight suggests how routine the purchase was, and how little standardised bakers' goods still were. The second recipe belongs to the older tradition of the weighed-egg cake, in which the eggs themselves are the measure and flour and sugar are balanced against them; it is related to the modern pound cake. Serving a pudding of this kind with a wine sauce was a common finish at a genteel table.