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Oatmeal Pudding
835. Pour a quart of boiling milk over a pint of the best fine oatmeal; let it soak all night; next day beat two eggs, and mix a little salt; butter a basin that will just hold it; cover it tight with a floured cloth, and boil it an hour and a half. Eat it with cold butter and salt. When cold, slice and toast it, and eat it as oatcake buttered.
A plain boiled oatmeal pudding of the old basin-and-cloth type, closer to a firm porridge loaf than to a sweet pudding. The hinge is the overnight soak: fine oatmeal will not soften properly in ninety minutes of steaming, so the soak does most of the cooking.
- Fine oatmeal, not rolled oats"Best fine oatmeal" means oat groats ground fine, the texture of coarse flour or fine semolina. Rolled or instant oats behave quite differently and give a slack, pasty result; look for fine or medium Scottish/Irish oatmeal.
- The measuresA quart of milk is about 4 US cups (an imperial quart, as intended here, is nearer 5). A pint of oatmeal is a dry volume measure -- an imperial pint is about 2.5 US cups, perhaps 9-10 oz / 270-300 g, depending how the meal is ground and settled. The mixture should be thick but still pourable after soaking.
- SoakingPour the milk boiling over the meal, stir, cover and leave overnight. Refrigerate rather than leaving it on the counter; the original assumed a cold larder.
- The basin and cloth"A basin that will just hold it" means a heatproof pudding basin filled nearly to the rim, so the pudding sets dense rather than spreading. Butter it well, cover with a floured cloth or with pleated parchment and foil tied under the lip, and set it on a trivet or folded cloth in the pan so it does not sit on the metal.
- BoilingWater should come halfway to two-thirds up the basin at a steady simmer, not a rolling boil, and be topped up with boiling water as it drops. An hour and a half is right for a basin of about 1.5 quarts; the pudding is done when a skewer comes out clean and the top feels set.
- SeasoningTwo eggs and "a little salt" is the whole of it, and salt is what makes the dish work. Use about a teaspoon for this quantity; underseasoned, it tastes of nothing.
- Serving and the second dayEnough for six as a supper dish. Served hot with cold butter and salt it is a savoury course, not a dessert. The instruction to slice and toast the cold pudding is the better half of the recipe: chill it thoroughly, cut into slabs about half an inch thick and brown them in a dry or lightly buttered pan.