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Caramel Pudding
Cream together two breakfast cupfuls of warmed butter and sugar. Add ten eggs (yolks and whites beaten separately), and two breakfast cupfuls of preserved damsons, removing the stones. Beat all together very lightly and season with two teaspoonsfuls of flavoring extract, vanilla or other flavoring. Prepare an open tart-case of pattern paste, fill with the ice-caramel preparation, and bake in a quick oven.
A rich baked plum-and-butter tart from the Waldorf's own kitchen, written in the compressed shorthand of a professional cook. Several of its terms need translating, and one instruction should not be followed literally.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is the large cup of a Victorian tea service, generally reckoned at 8 to 10 fluid ounces. The line most likely means two cupfuls each of butter and sugar, though it can also be read as two cupfuls of the two together; on the first reading that is a pound or more of each, so this is a very large tart or two ordinary ones.
- "Cream together warmed butter and sugar"Warmed here means softened to the point of being pliable, not melted. Melted butter will not hold air and the filling will separate into a greasy layer under a crust of sugar.
- DamsonsSmall, tart, blue-black plums, usually sold preserved in syrup or as a thick damson jam. Drain preserved fruit well before adding, or the filling will not set; ordinary Italian prune plums stewed with sugar are the nearest substitute.
- Pattern pasteAn obscure term, apparently a short paste for lining an open tart case; it may be a compositor's slip for "patty paste". Something close to a modern sweet short pastry is the safest reading. Blind-baking the shell before filling is advisable, since the filling is wet and the case is open.
- "Ice-caramel preparation"The text is inconsistent: no caramel appears among the ingredients, and the title calls it a pudding. Either a caramel step has dropped out in printing or the name refers to the deep amber colour the sugar and eggs take on in the oven. Treat the filling as written and expect a plum custard rather than anything tasting of burnt sugar.
- OvenA quick oven is usually reckoned at somewhere around 400 to 425F, which suits pastry but is hot for a ten-egg filling. Start hot to set the crust, then drop to about 350F for the bulk of the baking and pull the tart while the centre still has a slight wobble.
- Ten eggsHen eggs of the period were less uniform than today's graded eggs and often ran smaller, so eight or nine large eggs may come close in volume; separating and folding the whites is what keeps the filling light rather than leaden.
- YieldThe quantities are enough to fill a large open tart case, on the order of 12 inches, serving a dozen or so. Halving it is straightforward.
Oscar Tschirky was never a chef by title, but as ma tre d'h tel of the Waldorf he assembled its 1896 cookbook from the hotel's working kitchen, and the entries are notably terse. Damsons were a standard American preserve in the period, put up in autumn and drawn on all winter, since the fruit is too sour and stony to eat out of hand but sets beautifully with sugar. The confusion between the title, the "ice-caramel preparation" and the plum filling is typical of a book compiled at speed from kitchen notes. What survives clearly is the shape of the dish: an open tart of enriched pastry holding a heavy, egg-bound fruit cream, a hotel dessert built to be cut in a dining room rather than served from a pudding basin.