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Adelaide Pudding
Put the whites of three and the yolks of six eggs into a bowl and beat thoroughly; then place a pint of water and nine ounces of sugar in a saucepan and boil; when the scum rises, pour it over the eggs, and add the grated rind and the juice of a lemon, and whip the whole well together for about twenty minutes. Dredge in slowly about eight ounces of flour, and when thoroughly mixed, pour it into a well-buttered tin or mould, set it in a slack oven, and bake it for twenty minutes, then turn it out onto a dish, pour around a little wine sauce, and serve.
A boiled-syrup sponge pudding of the Victorian type, built on eggs alone with no butter and no chemical leavening. Two things decide whether it works: how you introduce the hot syrup, and how long you whip afterwards.
- The hinge: tempering the syrupThe boiling sugar syrup has to go into the beaten eggs in a thin, steady stream while you keep whipping, or the yolks set into threads of sweet omelette. "When the scum rises" means as soon as it comes to a full boil and the froth lifts, before it starts to colour.
- Twenty minutes of whippingThat figure assumes a hand whisk. In a stand mixer on medium-high, 8 to 10 minutes will bring the mixture to a pale, thick, ribbon stage that holds a trail. This aeration is the only leavening in the pudding, so do not cut it short.
- Weights into cupsNine ounces of sugar is about 1 1/4 cups; eight ounces of flour is about 1 3/4 cups, though flour was measured by weight for good reason and a scale is better here. A pint is 2 cups.
- That much waterA full pint of water against eight ounces of flour gives an unusually slack batter by modern standards; the recipe boils the syrup only until the scum rises, so little of it evaporates. Expect a soft, custardy crumb rather than a cake.
- Slack ovenA slack oven is a cool one, generally reckoned somewhere in the region of 275 to 325F. The recipe calls for no water bath, but setting the buttered mould in a roasting pan of hot water will help keep the egg mixture from curdling at the edges.
- Baking timeTwenty minutes will only serve a shallow tin. A charlotte mould or deep basin of this batter needs 40 minutes or more; it is done when the centre is set and springs back, and a skewer comes out clean.
- Turning outButter the mould heavily and dust it with sugar or flour, and let the pudding rest five minutes before inverting. Turned out too hot, an eggy pudding of this kind slumps.
- Wine sauceA period wine sauce is usually a sweetened sherry or Madeira sauce: either a whisked sabayon of egg yolk, sugar and wine over hot water, or wine thickened with a little cornstarch and butter. The recipe itself gives no formula. Serve it warm, poured around rather than over.
- YieldProbably about six servings, in a mould of roughly 1 1/2 quarts; the recipe specifies neither.
Puddings named for Adelaide appear in nineteenth-century English and Anglo-American cookery, and the name is traditionally associated with Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, queen consort of William IV, though the link is customary rather than documented for any particular dish. What marks the recipe as period is its method: sugar cooked to a syrup and beaten into eggs, the batter raised by air and steam alone. That technique belonged to a kitchen with strong arms and no baking powder in the cupboard, and it produced the light, moist, spoonable puddings that a hotel dining room could turn out of a mould and flood with wine sauce at the table.