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Chocolate Pudding
948. Scrape down very fine two ounces of prepared chocolate, and add to it a tea-spoonful of nutmeg and cinnamon mixed. Put it into a saucepan, and pour over it a quart of rich milk, stirring it well; cover it, and let it come to a boil. Then stir up the chocolate, and press out all the lumps; repeat this until it is quite smooth. Then stir in by degrees, while it boils, a quarter of a pound of sifted sugar, and set it to cool. Beat eight eggs very well, and pour through a strainer to the chocolate; stir well, and bake. This pudding should be eaten cold.
A baked chocolate custard rather than a steamed pudding, and the whole thing hangs on the temperature of the milk when the eggs go in. The original says only "bake" — assume a water bath in a slow oven.
- Cool the base first"Set it to cool" is the hinge of the recipe. Eight beaten eggs poured into near-boiling chocolate milk will scramble on contact; the mixture should be no more than lukewarm, and strained again after the eggs are stirred in.
- Prepared chocolateIn this period this meant a hard cake of ground cocoa liquor sold to be scraped or grated; it could be sweetened and sometimes spiced, though this recipe adds its own sugar. Unsweetened baking chocolate is the closest match by weight; if you use a modern sweetened bar, cut the sugar back accordingly.
- The spice measure"A tea-spoonful of nutmeg and cinnamon mixed" is one teaspoon of the two combined, not one of each — a generous amount for a quart of milk. Half a teaspoon of cinnamon with a quarter of grated nutmeg suits most modern palates.
- Sifted sugarThis is what we would call caster or superfine sugar, sifted to break up lumps. A quarter pound is about half a cup plus two tablespoons; ordinary granulated dissolves perfectly well here.
- Oven and vesselThe recipe says only "bake". A buttered dish set in a roasting tin of hot water, in a slow to moderate oven of about 325F, suits a custard of this kind. A quart of milk with eight eggs will need roughly an hour to an hour and a quarter, and is done when the centre still trembles slightly.
- Rich milkPeriod "rich milk" was unhomogenised and closer to today's whole milk with cream stirred in. Three cups whole milk to one cup single cream gives the right body.
- Yield and servingA quart of milk and eight eggs makes eight to ten servings. As the recipe insists, it is meant to be eaten cold — chill it thoroughly and the custard sets firm enough to slice.