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Dutch Wafer Puddings
930. Set a pint of cream over the fire, and stir in half a pound of butter; then beat into it a quarter of a pound of flour well dried. Take seven eggs, leaving out four whites, beat them well, and mix them with the other ingredients in an earthen pan; set it before the fire for an hour, then put it into small patty-pans or saucers, and bake them in a hot oven till they are brown; turn them out, and serve at once with good wine sauce poured over them.
A rich cooked-batter pudding built like a loose choux paste: cream and butter heated, flour beaten in, eggs worked through, then baked in small moulds. The results are hollow, brown and fragile, and must reach the table straight from the oven.
- The hinge: get the eggs in off the heatBeat the flour into the hot cream and butter until it forms a smooth paste, then take the pan from the fire before adding the eggs. Eggs stirred into a boiling mixture will scramble and the puddings will not rise.
- MeasuresA pint here is the imperial 20 fl oz, about 2 1/2 US cups. Half a pound of butter is 2 sticks; a quarter pound of flour is close to 1 cup, and it is worth weighing rather than scooping.
- "Flour well dried"Flour was spread before the fire to drive off damp from sacks and larders. Modern bagged flour is dry as sold; skip this step entirely.
- The eggsSeven eggs less four whites means three whole eggs plus four yolks. The extra yolks give richness and colour; using whole eggs throughout would give a firmer, less rich result.
- "Set it before the fire for an hour"Most likely a warm rest that lets the flour hydrate and keeps the batter fluid. A covered bowl at room temperature for an hour will serve; refrigeration would stiffen the butter.
- A hot ovenRead this as roughly 400-450F. The high heat is what turns steam into lift and browns the outsides; a cooler oven is likely to give flatter, greasier puddings.
- Patty-pansSmall tin moulds, close to a modern muffin or deep tartlet tin; the recipe also allows saucers. Butter them well and fill about two-thirds, and avoid opening the oven early.
- Yield and servingThe recipe states no yield; the quantities will fill a number of small pans. Turn them out and sauce them immediately, as the recipe directs.
- Wine sauceA period wine sauce is usually butter, sugar and a fortified or white wine warmed together until smooth, sometimes thickened. The recipe directs it poured over rather than served alongside.
Recipes called "wafer puddings" appear in English cookery books from the eighteenth century onward; the name is usually explained as a borrowing from the thin batter wafers baked between hot irons rather than from any thinness in the pudding itself, though that explanation is traditional rather than documented. The "Dutch" tag was applied loosely in British kitchens of the period to dishes thought to come by way of the Low Countries, and should be treated as traditional rather than documented provenance. The method is the cooked flour-and-butter paste that also underlies choux: cream and butter scalded, flour beaten to a paste, eggs worked in to make it rise on steam alone. The British Cookery Book (1859), edited by J. H. Walsh, gathered a great many older receipts from earlier printed sources and correspondents, which is why the instructions still assume a hearth for warming batter and an oven judged by hand rather than by dial.