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Cream Pudding
Mix three tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar with the rind of a grated lemon and six eggs, beaten to a froth. Take one pint of milk, half a pound of flour, and one teaspoonful of salt, and mix them together. When thoroughly mixed add the sugar and eggs; just before serving add one pint of thick cream. Pour this into small cups or pudding dishes, and bake until done.
A baked batter pudding rather than a stirred custard — the half-pound of flour puts it closer to a clafoutis or a Yorkshire pudding batter than to anything spoonable. The instructions are terse even by 1896 standards, so the gaps are worth filling in before you start.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A modern cook will do best at a moderate 350F, so the eggs set before the surface colors. Baked hotter it is likely to dome and then collapse.
- Half a pound of flourThat is roughly 1 3/4 cups — a substantial amount against one pint of milk. Expect a thick, pourable batter, not a custard. Whisk it into the milk first and let it stand a few minutes so the flour hydrates and the lumps relax.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term usually means granulated sugar ground fine, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Superfine or ordinary granulated is the closer match; three tablespoons is a barely sweet pudding, meant to be served with a sauce or preserves.
- "Just before serving add one pint of thick cream"This is almost certainly a compositor's slip or a compressed instruction: cream added after baking cannot be poured into cups and baked. Read it as just before baking. "Thick cream" means heavy cream, around 36 percent fat.
- Rubbing the lemon rindGrate the zest of one lemon directly into the sugar and rub it with your fingers before adding the eggs. The sugar crystals break the oil cells open, which is a good reason to combine them first as the recipe does.
- Water bathNot mentioned, but small cups of an egg-heavy batter benefit from being set in a roasting pan with an inch of hot water. It keeps the outsides from setting into rubber while the centers finish.
- Baked until doneFor individual cups, 35 to 45 minutes at 350F. Done means puffed, set at the edge, and only faintly wobbly at the center; a knife inserted an inch from the rim should come out clean. They will sink slightly as they cool, which is normal.
- YieldAround a quart and a half of batter — eight to ten small ramekins or custard cups, or one large dish, which will need closer to an hour.
Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born ma tre d'h tel whose name fronted this 1896 volume, was not a cook by trade, and the book reflects that: it is a compilation drawn from the Waldorf's kitchens and from the broader repertoire of American and European household cookery of the day, with entries ranging from elaborate hotel dishes to plain nursery food like this one. Baked batter puddings of milk, eggs and flour run back through English cookery for centuries, and a lemon-scented version in individual cups seems to have been familiar family-dinner fare on both sides of the Atlantic by the 1890s, though how widespread it was is hard to say. The terseness here o an an instruction that reads as garbled is typical of the period, when a recipe was a reminder for someone who already knew the technique rather than a set of directions for someone who did not.