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Jelly Pudding
Scald three-fourths of a pint of milk, pour it over about one pound of sifted breadcrumbs, and beat it up till nearly cold; then stir in the beaten yolks of seven eggs, then the beaten whites, and finally one and one-half saltspoonfuls of bicarbonate of soda dissolved in a little boiling water. Half fill some breakfast cups with this batter, place them in a hot oven and bake for twenty to thirty minutes. When done turn them quickly out of the cups, make a cut part way round each one with a sharp knife, pull them open sufficiently to get the bowl of a spoon inside, slip inside one tablespoonful of any kind of sweet jelly, and pinch the slit together again. Serve hot with cream and sugar.
A soda-raised breadcrumb sponge baked in cups and pocketed with jelly after it comes out of the oven. Most of the work is in getting the batter consistency right, since the original proportions do not add up.
- The crumb-to-milk ratioThree-fourths of a pint is 1 1/2 cups of milk, and a full pound of sifted crumbs against that liquid gives a stiff paste, not a batter that can be spooned into cups. Start with about 4 oz of sifted crumbs and add more only until you have a thick but droppable batter; the pound may be an error, or may assume very light fresh crumbs.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon, so one and a half of them is a scant 1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda. Do not round up: there is little acid in the batter to neutralise it, and excess soda can taste soapy and discolour the crumb.
- Hot oven"Hot" in period terms is roughly 400-425F, though the recipe gives no temperature. The puddings need to set fast so they rise and hold their shape when turned out.
- Breakfast cupsBreakfast cups were large; take them as roughly 8 oz or more. Use ovenproof ramekins or custard cups of that size, well buttered, filled halfway as directed so the batter has room to climb. Expect roughly six to eight puddings, depending on how much crumb you use.
- Scalding the milkBring the milk just to the point where it steams and shivers at the edge, around 180F, then pour it over the crumbs. Beating until nearly cold is not optional; hot milk will scramble the yolks that go in next.
- Folding the whitesThe whites do most of the lifting here, with the soda helping. Beat them to soft peaks and fold them in with a light hand, then add the dissolved soda last and get the cups into the oven immediately.
- The jelly pocketCut and fill while the puddings are hot, working quickly one at a time. Any firm fruit jelly works; a loose jam will run out of the slit. Warming the jelly slightly makes it slip off the spoon.
- ServingThere is no sugar in the batter at all, which is why it is served with cream and sugar at the table. Sweeten the cream or dust the tops, and serve within a few minutes of baking, as the sponge collapses and toughens as it cools.
Breadcrumb puddings raised with beaten eggs and a little soda were standard economy cookery in nineteenth-century English and American households, a way of turning stale bread into something with the texture of sponge cake. Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf's dining rooms from the hotel's opening in 1893 and published his cookbook in 1896; this recipe belongs to the plain domestic side of such cookery rather than to the restaurant showpieces: no sugar in the batter, no butter, no flour, and a spoonful of whatever jelly is in the pantry. The trick of splitting a hot pudding and slipping the preserve inside rather than baking it in is often said to be a practical one, on the grounds that jelly baked into a light batter sinks and burns.