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Lemon Pudding
(1) Butter a pint pudding-basin and line it with the crumb of a French roll cut in thin slices and thickly spread with lemon paste. Make a custard with one-half pint of new milk, two eggs, flavor with a little grated lemon peel and sweeten to taste. Fill the basin with this custard, put on this some slices of the French roll, also spread with the lemon paste, tie over the top of the basin a thick paper, stand it in a stewpan with boiling water to about one-half its height, place the lid on the stewpan and let it steam for one hour. Great care should be taken to keep the water just below the boiling point. When done, sprinkle with sugar, and serve with sweet sauce poured round it.
A steamed bread-and-butter custard in miniature, built in a single small basin. Everything depends on keeping the water hot but never boiling.
- The hinge: sub-simmer waterThe instruction to keep the water "just below the boiling point" is the whole recipe. Hold the pan around 180-185F; a rolling boil will curdle the custard and leave it weeping and honeycombed.
- Pint pudding-basinA 2-cup (US pint) heatproof bowl or pudding basin. Any straight-sided ceramic or metal bowl of that capacity works, so long as it fits in the pot with the lid down.
- "Lemon paste"Period shorthand for a thick lemon curd or lemon cheese - eggs, sugar, butter and lemon cooked to a spreadable paste. Jarred lemon curd is the direct substitute; a thin lemon jelly is not, as it will melt into the custard.
- "New milk"Fresh whole milk, as opposed to skimmed or the previous day's. Use whole milk; anything lower in fat makes a thinner set.
- French rollA crusty white roll with a soft, close crumb. Cut away the crust and slice the interior thin - the crumb is what absorbs the custard. Slightly stale bread holds its shape better than fresh.
- Covering the basin"A thick paper" tied over the top keeps condensation out. Buttered parchment, or parchment under foil, pleated across the centre to allow for rise, and tied with string.
- Doneness and timingAn hour is right for a pint basin. It is set when the centre barely trembles and reads about 170-175F; if the pot has been allowed to boil, check earlier.
- Sweet sauceA thin pouring custard, a lemon sauce, or melted butter beaten with sugar and a little wine. The recipe has it poured round the pudding rather than over it, after the top has been sprinkled with sugar.
- YieldA pint basin serves two generously, three at the end of a long meal.
Steamed puddings in a basin, sealed with paper and set in a pan of barely trembling water, were the backbone of English domestic cookery through the nineteenth century, and they crossed into American hotel kitchens along with the cooks and the cookbooks. Oscar Tschirky's book, compiled from the Waldorf's kitchens at the turn of the twentieth century, sets plain British nursery sweets alongside the elaborate French service the hotel was known for - a reminder that grand restaurants of the period were expected to produce comfort as well as spectacle. The dish itself is a small variation on bread-and-butter pudding, with lemon curd standing in for the butter; "lemon cheese" or "lemon paste" was a common preserve in Victorian larders, and using it as a spread between bread slices was an ordinary economy. "New milk" - unskimmed milk fresh from the cow - was a meaningful distinction in an era before reliable refrigeration.