No. 3111

Tyrolean Pudding

Pouding a la Tyrolienne

Soften five ounces of beef marrow, run it through a sieve into a vessel and beat it up to a cream, adding five egg-yolks and five whole eggs, one at a time. As this becomes frothy put into it six ounces of apricot marmalade (No. 3675), six ounces of grated chocolate, six ounces of lady finger crumbs soaked in a gill and three-quarters of double cream, three ounces of Smyrna raisins well cleansed and washed in hot water, and lastly beat in six very stiff egg-whites. Butter and sugar a dome-shaped mold with a cylindrical center, fill it with the preparation and place it in a bain-marie in a saucepan; bring the water to a boil, then push it into a slack oven to cook for forty to forty-five minutes; take it from the oven and let stand for a few moments before unmolding on a dish; cover over with chocolate sauce and serve more of the same separately.

Chocolate Sauce.-Dilute two ounces of chocolate with two gills of water and a gill of vanilla syrup; let boil, then strain through a fine strainer and add one gill of rich cream.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A steamed marrow pudding from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, built like a bread-and-butter custard but enriched with suet-soft beef marrow instead of butter. The hinge is the oven: a slack oven with the water bath already boiling, so the custard sets without curdling or souffléing over the rim.

Slack ovenRead this as around 300F, or a little below. Anything hotter and the egg-heavy batter will puff, then collapse and weep once unmolded. The water in the bain-marie should be brought to a boil on the stovetop first, as directed, so the pudding starts cooking immediately.
GillsA gill is 1/2 cup. A gill and three-quarters of double cream is a scant 7/8 cup; the chocolate sauce takes 1 cup water, 1/2 cup vanilla syrup and 1/2 cup cream.
Beef marrowFive ounces of raw marrow scooped from split leg bones, warmed only until soft enough to press through a sieve, never melted to liquid. Ask a butcher for canoe-cut marrow bones. It behaves like a very soft butter.
Grated chocolateIn Ranhofer's day this most likely means plain block chocolate with little or no added sugar. Use unsweetened or 85-percent, grated fine on a rasp; sweetened chips risk making the pudding cloying against the apricot.
Smyrna raisinsPale seedless raisins from western Turkey, sold today as sultanas or golden raisins. The hot-water wash plumps them and rinses off dust and grit.
Lady finger crumbsDry savoiardi, crushed, not fresh sponge. Let them drink the cream fully before they go in, or they will pull moisture from the custard and leave dry pockets.
The moldA dome mold with a cylindrical center is a tube mold with a rounded top; a fluted Turk's-head mold with a central tube is the closest match. Butter it and dust with granulated sugar rather than flour, as directed.
Apricot marmaladeNo. 3675 is Ranhofer's own apricot marmalade, cross-referenced here. A good thick apricot preserve, sieved of skins, stands in.
Yield and restingRoughly 6 to 8 servings, from a mold of about 1 1/2 quarts. The few moments of standing matter: unmold too soon and the pudding slumps.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that repertoire, numbered recipe by recipe with cross-references, of which No. 3675 here is one. Dishes labeled à la tyrolienne in nineteenth-century French kitchens generally signaled something Alpine or Austrian in feeling rather than any documented Tyrolean original, and this pudding fits the pattern: chocolate, apricot, raisins and sponge crumbs are the vocabulary of Viennese pastry as Paris understood it. The beef marrow is the older element. Before the nineteenth century, marrow was a standard enriching fat in sweet English and French puddings and pie fillings, prized for a texture butter does not give; by Ranhofer's day it survived mainly in grand-restaurant cooking and as marrow on toast, and it has since vanished from dessert almost entirely.