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Marlborough Pudding
905. Put two ounces of candied-peel, shred fine, at the bottom of a dish, add six ounces of lump sugar pounded, six ounces of butter melted over the fire, with six yolks of eggs, taking care not to let the eggs boil, or they will curdle. Pour this hot over the peel. Line the dish with paste, and bake half an hour, or more, till it is solid. It requires a hot oven just at first, and then a rather slower heat.
A rich yolk-and-butter tart of the Marlborough family, closer to a lemon-curd tart than to a milk custard. The whole thing hangs on keeping the yolk mixture below the point where it scrambles.
- Order of workLine the dish with pastry first, scatter the peel over the base, then pour in the hot mixture. The instructions as printed put the lining after the filling.
- The hinge: do not let the yolks setMelt the butter, take the pan off direct heat, and beat in the sugar and yolks over the gentlest warmth or a bowl of hot water. Above roughly 160F the yolks scramble and the filling will never be smooth again.
- QuantitiesTwo ounces of candied peel is about a third of a cup, shredded fine; six ounces of butter is one and a half sticks; six ounces of sugar is a scant cup. Six yolks to that much fat gives a very dense filling — this is a small, rich tart, not a family pudding.
- Lump sugar poundedLoaf or lump sugar crushed in a mortar was the refined sugar of the day. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct replacement; caster dissolves faster into the warm butter.
- Oven heat"A hot oven just at first" and then "a rather slower heat" give no figures; in a modern oven this is usually read as a hot start of around 425-450F for the first ten minutes or so to set the pastry base, then down to about 325F. The recipe asks for half an hour or more.
- Judging "solid"The recipe says to bake till solid; in practice the filling firms further as it cools, and baking until stiff all through can turn the yolks grainy.
- Dish and pastryA shallow tart tin lined with shortcrust suits the volume. A blind-baked shell, or at least a base chilled hard before the hot filling goes in, keeps the pastry from going sodden.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities suggest a small tart, best cut in thin wedges as you would a treacle tart.
Marlborough puddings and Marlborough pies appear across English and American cookery from the eighteenth century onward, usually meaning a pastry case filled with a sweet, egg-thickened mixture; the American branch of the family took on grated apple and became a New England Thanksgiving fixture, while the English versions such as this one stayed closer to a butter-and-yolk curd, kin to lemon cheese-cakes and Chester pudding. The connection to the Marlborough title is traditional rather than documented, and no particular duke or duchess can be tied to it. What the recipe does record plainly is the Victorian kitchen's fondness for candied citron and orange peel, sold by the slab and shredded at home, and for puddings whose whole substance is egg yolk, sugar and butter — the sort of dish that only makes sense in a household where the whites were already spoken for by meringues, icings or clarifying jelly.