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Egg Snow Pudding
Put into a saucepan a quarter of a pound of loaf-sugar with one teacupful of water, and boil until a dark brown; pour it into a small warmed basin, and turn it about until well coated. Whisk to a stiff froth the whites of half a dozen eggs. Pour this into the basin, which it should only half fill, tie a sheet of white paper over, place it in a large flat stewpan with boiling water to half its height, put the lid on the pan, and keep it at the side of the fire, so the water will simmer without boiling for forty-five minutes. Turn the pudding out onto a hot dish, and serve.
This is a steamed meringue set in a caramel-lined basin — closer to a soufflé than to a baked pudding, and it lives or dies by the temperature of the water bath.
- The hinge: never let the water boil"Keep it at the side of the fire" means holding the bath at about 180–190F, a bare shiver with no rolling bubbles. Boiling water drives the whipped whites up, then they collapse and weep, leaving a rubbery layer at the bottom.
- Loaf-sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone; plain granulated white sugar is the equivalent. A quarter pound is about half a cup.
- A teacupfulVictorian and Edwardian teacups ran roughly 6 fluid ounces, so read this as about 3/4 cup of water. The exact amount matters little since nearly all of it boils off before the sugar colours.
- "Boil until a dark brown"You are making caramel, and the window between dark brown and burnt is perhaps twenty seconds. Pull it off the heat when it is the colour of an old penny; residual heat will carry it further.
- The basinA 1 to 1.5 quart heatproof pudding basin or metal charlotte mould. Warm it first, as the original says — caramel poured into a cold bowl seizes before it can coat the sides.
- The paper coverA tied sheet of paper kept ash and condensation off. Buttered parchment or loosely domed foil does the same job; do not seal it tight, as the pudding needs room to rise.
- Egg whitesSix whites from modern large eggs is about 3/4 cup. Whisk to firm peaks but stop short of dry and grainy, or the pudding will be coarse.
- UnmouldingLet it stand two or three minutes off the heat, then run a knife round and invert onto a warm dish. Hardened caramel will loosen if you set the base of the basin briefly in hot water.
- Yield and servingServes four to six. The meringue itself is unsweetened — all the sweetness is in the caramel — so it wants a thin pouring custard or cold cream alongside.
Egg-white puddings like this one plausibly answered a practical need: a hotel brigade turning out mayonnaise, hollandaise, custards and rich sauces accumulated whites by the quart, and the pastry department would have been expected to find a use for them. "Snow" is the old English name for stiffly beaten whites, the same idea behind French œufs à la neige, snow eggs poached in milk. The caramel-lined basin is the technique of crème caramel applied to a foam rather than a custard, which is why the recipe instructs that the water be kept below a boil. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, published his Cook Book in 1896; much of it reads as a working record of what a large American hotel kitchen of the 1890s actually served, thrift and grand cuisine sitting side by side.