No. 3093

Pudding a la Bradley

Pouding a la Bradley

Soak one pound of bread-crumbs in hot milk; extract all the moisture and place it in a saucepan, pouring over it a few spoonfuls of raw cream. Stir briskly with a spoon and add twenty-four egg-yolks, ten ounces of sugar, ten ounces of butter, a little at a time, twelve tablespoonfuls of frangipane (No. 44), a grain of salt, a grated orange peel, a pound and a quarter of smyrna raisins and eight ounces of candied pineapple cut up in small squares, and lastly fifteen well-beaten egg-whites. With this preparation fill three-quarters full some buttered and floured pudding molds; place them in a deep baking pan containing boiling water and poach for one hour in the bain-marie in a slack oven. Serve with a Sabayon with California wine (No. 3096). This quantity is sufficient for twenty persons.

← No. 3092 Pudding a la Benvenuto Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3094 Mellow Pudding, Apricot Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

A twenty-portion steamed bread pudding from the Delmonico's kitchen, built on two dozen yolks and a separate cooked almond cream. Everything here scales cleanly by quarters if you want a household-sized version.

The hinge: gentle heat, water bath"Poach in the bain-marie in a slack oven" means the molds sit in boiling water in a deep pan and the oven runs low; a slack oven is usually read as somewhere in the 250-300F range, though the book gives no figure. Anything hotter and this quantity of yolk curdles at the edges before the center sets; keep the water hot but never simmering hard, and top it up if it drops.
Scaling downAs written it feeds twenty. A quarter batch is 4 oz bread crumbs, 6 yolks, 2 1/2 oz sugar, 2 1/2 oz butter, 3 tablespoons frangipane, 5 oz raisins, 2 oz candied pineapple and 4 whites — one 6-cup mold, roughly 45-55 minutes.
Frangipane (No. 44)Ranhofer's frangipane is not the modern almond-butter filling for tarts. It is a cooked pastry cream — milk, flour, egg, sugar, butter — flavored with pounded almonds or crushed macaroons. Twelve tablespoons is three-quarters of a cup, so it needs making in advance and cooling before it goes in.
Smyrna raisinsPale seedless grapes dried around Izmir, sold today as sultanas or golden raisins. Ordinary dark raisins work but read heavier and sweeter against the pineapple.
Bread crumbsFresh crumb from a day-old white loaf, not dry packaged crumbs, which will drink far more milk and turn pasty. Soak, then press out the moisture hard — the recipe means it when it says extract all the moisture.
Egg-white ratioTwenty-four yolks against fifteen whites, so you finish with nine surplus whites. Fold the beaten whites in last and stop while streaks are still visible; the raisins and pineapple are heavy and will deflate an overworked batter.
Molds and unmoldingButter and flour thoroughly and fill only three-quarters — this rises. Rest 10 minutes out of the water bath before turning out, or the pudding tears.
The sauceSabayon is yolks, sugar and wine whisked over hot water to a thick foam. "California wine" is Ranhofer calling for a domestic bottling rather than an imported one; any dry-to-off-dry white, sherry or Madeira does the same job.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's account of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its puddings run to dozens of numbered variations distinguished mainly by their garnish and their dedicatee. Dishes "a la Bradley" and "a la Benvenuto" were the restaurant's way of flattering patrons, colleagues and public figures; the practice was so routine that the person behind a given name is often unrecoverable, and this one is not documented. What the recipe does record plainly is the economics of a large brigade kitchen — two dozen yolks, a separately made frangipane cream, candied pineapple bought in — and the confidence of a house that could bake twenty portions at once. The call for a sabayon made with California wine is the period detail worth noticing: by the 1890s West Coast bottlings had reached eastern restaurant cellars in quantity, and here Ranhofer reaches for one rather than automatically for Marsala or Madeira.