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Carrot Pudding (With a pint of milk sugar)
with a pint of milk; sugar and nutmeg to the taste. Let the slices soak in this custard for an hour, then pour off, and drain another hour; fry them till they are of a nice brown, and serve with wine sauce.
What survives here is the second half of a method for slices soaked in a sweet egg custard, fried, and sauced. The technique is straightforward, but the proportions at the head of the recipe are absent, so a little judgement is needed.
- The custard proportionsThe text begins mid-sentence with "a pint of milk", so the number of eggs is not stated. Custards of this kind commonly run around three to four eggs to a pint (2 cups) of milk, but the original figure is lost.
- Sugar and nutmeg "to the taste"For a pint of milk, 2 to 3 tablespoons of sugar and a quarter of a whole nutmeg, grated fresh, is one reasonable reading of "to the taste". Pre-ground nutmeg loses much of its aroma.
- Why the two hours matterOne hour soaking, then a full hour draining, is not padding. Slices that go into the pan still dripping will spit, stew rather than brown, and fall apart when turned.
- The frying fatThe original does not name a fat; clarified butter or lard in a shallow pan would be usual. Clarified butter browns the custard coating without the milk solids in whole butter burning; a neutral oil with a knob of butter added works as well.
- HeatMedium heat, around 350F if you are using a thermometer in the fat. Too hot and the egg coating scorches before the interior of each slice heats through.
- Wine sauceIn this period that means a sweet pouring sauce: sugar, butter and a fortified wine such as sherry or madeira, warmed together until smooth, sometimes thickened with a little flour or an egg yolk. It is served hot and thin, not as a glaze.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; a pint of custard will coat a fair number of slices, depending on how thick they are cut.