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Soufflé Pudding
928. Baked.-Take eight rusks or buns, and soak them thoroughly in a pint of milk. Make a custard of eight beaten eggs and a pint and a half of milk, stir in a quarter of a pound of sifted sugar, and flavour with vanilla or almond, or rub the sugar on lemons before sifting. Beat and stir the rusk to a smooth mass, and add the custard by degrees, stirring well. Bake in a brisk oven rather more than ten minutes, and serve with sifted sugar over it. The yeast in the rusk will cause it to puff up light.
EVEŚ PUDDING. 929. Souflé Pudding Boiled. -Three table-spoonfuls of flour, a quarter of a pound of sifted sugar, two ounces of butter, half a pint of milk; stir altogether over the fire till quite thick; then mix the yolks of six eggs with the batter, and, the last thing before boiling, add three of the whites whisked to a strong froth; steam very slowly in a stewpan with very little water one hour, pour apricot jam over when turned out, or flavour it with ginger or any other flavour, and dish with wine sauce. The mould should not be more than three parts full. Another. Take a pint of new milk, put half into the stewpan, and mix the other half with five spoonsful of fine flour. Let the milk be scalding hot, then stir in the other milk and flour. Let it all scald five minutes, stirring it all the time. Then take five eggs, stir in the yolks. Beat the whites to a froth, and when cold mix them all together. Sweeten to taste, flavour with any thing you like; strain it; stick the mould with any dried fruit. Put a buttered paper under the cloth. Boil it an hour and a half, and take it off five minutes before it is wanted.
Another. Boil half a pint of very thin cream with lemon-peel, cinnamon, and sugar; let it stand till cold, then add four ounces of butter, two handfuls of flour, five yolks of eggs, the whites beat up to a stiff froth, and a little wine or brandy; (first put the butter and flour into a stewpan, and melt them together, then stir in the cream, &c., that has been boiled, then the five yolks of eggs, one at a time.) Mix all together over the fire, take it off, add the whites, and boil for one hour, as above.
Four related puddings: one baked on a base of soaked rusks, three boiled or steamed from a thick flour-and-milk panada enriched with eggs. All of them rise on beaten egg white and steam, so the whites and the timing are what matter.
- Imperial pintsThis is a British book, so a pint is 20 fl oz, not 16. The baked pudding therefore takes about 2.5 cups of milk for soaking and 3.75 cups for the custard; the boiled versions use 1.25 cups per half-pint.
- "A brisk oven"Conventionally a hot oven, roughly 400-450F, though period oven terms are imprecise. Ten minutes at that heat will set only a shallow dish; a deep one made with 3.75 cups of milk and eight eggs needs far longer, and is better baked at 350F until just set with a slight wobble at the centre.
- RusksTwice-baked sweetened bread, dry and crisp — the closest current equivalents are Dutch beschuit or a plain unspiced biscotti. Stale brioche or challah, dried in a low oven, behaves the same way. The book's claim that "the yeast in the rusk will cause it to puff up" is period reasoning rather than fact: the yeast died in the first baking, and the lift comes from eggs and steam.
- The panada must be cooked outIn the boiled versions the flour, butter and milk are stirred over heat "till quite thick" — this is a thick roux-based paste, and it needs a few minutes of real cooking or the pudding tastes of raw flour. Let it cool to warm before the yolks go in, and to nearly cold before the whites are folded.
- Whites last, folded not stirredThe instruction to add the froth "the last thing before boiling" is the hinge of the recipe. Fold in thirds with a light hand and get the mould into the steam immediately; a beaten batter that stands around collapses and boils dense.
- Steaming, not boiling"Steam very slowly in a stewpan with very little water" means a covered mould standing in an inch or two of barely simmering water — a modern water bath or a steamer basket. The mould three-parts full is correct advice: these rise substantially. Cover with buttered paper or foil, and keep the water topped up.
- Ambiguous measures"Two handfuls of flour" and "five spoonsful of fine flour" have no reliable modern equivalent; the second is likely tablespoons, in the range of 1.5-2 oz. Judge by texture — the cooked paste should be thick enough to hold the spoon upright.
- FlavouringsRubbing sugar on lemon peel to draw out the oil is worth doing and gives a cleaner flavour than zest. If using almond flavouring, use a modern food-grade extract.
- Yield and servingNo yield is given in the text, and the versions differ considerably in size. The third recipe's direction to "take it off five minutes before it is wanted" is ambiguous and may mean lifting it from the heat shortly before serving rather than turning out at once. Apricot jam thinned with a little water, or a sweet wine sauce, is the accompaniment the book itself names.