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Farina Pudding
Take one quart of milk; three eggs; one lemon (one-half the juice and all the rind); one cup of sugar; four tablespoons of farina; one tablespoon of butter; one teaspoon of salt ; one teaspoon of vanilla; one-eighth teaspoon of nutmeg. Heat the milk in a double boiler, and when boiling, add the farina, and boil one-half hour. Just before removing it from the fire, put in the butter, stir it well, and when it has melted, turn the mixture into a pudding-dish. When cooled, add the sugar and vanilla, the grated rind of the lemon, the juice and the nutmeg. Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs, beat them thoroughly, and add first the yolks, stirring them well into the pudding, and then the beaten whites, stirring them in only enough to mix them well. Bake the pudding one-half hour in a quick oven. Serve with wine sauce.
A milk-and-semolina pudding lightened with beaten egg whites, closer to a baked custard than to a steamed pudding. Two figures in the original need attention before you start: the salt and the oven.
- FarinaFarina is finely milled wheat middlings, sold today as Cream of Wheat or as fine semolina. Four tablespoons to a quart of milk gives a thin, spoonable base that sets in the oven; do not substitute coarse semolina, which will stay gritty in the time given.
- The saltOne teaspoon of salt in a sweet pudding of this size is more than most modern palates will want, though period recipes do sometimes call for as much. A quarter teaspoon is enough to sharpen the milk and sugar.
- "A quick oven"Usually reckoned at somewhere around 375-400F, which is already hotter than an egg custard tolerates comfortably without curdling or weeping; a dish of this kind is safest baked in a pan of hot water.
- Cool before the eggs go inThe instruction to let the farina mixture cool is the hinge of the recipe. Stirred into hot porridge, the yolks scramble and the whites collapse, and no amount of oven time will smooth it out. Bring the base down to warm, not hot, to the touch.
- The lemon juiceHalf a lemon's juice into a milk base will thicken and slightly curdle it. Adding it after the mixture has cooled, as written, keeps the effect mild; expect the flavour to be pronounced rather than subtle.
- Whites last, folded"Stirring them in only enough to mix them well" means folding. The pudding rises a little in the oven and settles as it cools, so serve it soon after baking.
- Double boiler timingHalf an hour over simmering water is right for farina at this proportion; stir occasionally so it does not set in a skin at the bottom of the upper pan.
- Yield and sauceA quart of milk fills a two-quart dish and serves six to eight. "Wine sauce" of this period is generally a sweetened butter-and-sugar sauce flavoured with sherry or madeira; a plain custard or a lemon sauce serves the same purpose.
Farina puddings belong to a large family of nineteenth-century milk puddings built on a starchy grain simmered in milk, alongside rice, sago, tapioca and cornstarch versions, all of which appear together in books of this period. The appeal was economy and digestibility: a quart of milk and four spoonfuls of grain fed a household, and such puddings were often recommended as invalid and nursery food. Farina was sold commercially as a finely milled wheat cereal. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and magazines, issued its cook book as part of a broader line of household guidance for the same middle-class readership.