No. 3112

Pudding with Almonds-Light

Pounding Leger aux Amandes

Dissolve ten ounces of fine wheat and rice flour (half of each) in one and a half pints of almond milk (No. 4). Strain this liquid into a saucepan and add to it salt, half a pound of sugar and three ounces of butter. Cook the preparation, avoid all lumps and do not cease to stir until it detaches from the saucepan, then take it off and pour it into a vessel; incorporate with it slowly twelve egg-yolks, beating them in vigorously, and then add five ounces more butter, four ounces of finely pounded almonds, the peel of an orange, and finally nine well-beaten egg-whites. Butter some dome-shaped pudding molds, having them wider than their height, cover the interior sides with small flat round pieces of lady fingers cut out with a cutter and fill the hollow space three-quarters full with the preparation; poach the puddings for fifty minutes in a bain-marie with the vessel covered, and before removing push them into a slack oven to dry the tops. Take them out and unmold five minutes after on a hot dish; cover them lightly with an apricot sauce made with rum (No. 3001), and in each pudding insert a small hatelet composed of three graduated rounds of candied pineapple. Serve separately an apricot sauce mingled with almond milk, the same as for Plumery pudding (No. 3104). This quantity is sufficient for ten persons.

← No. 3111 Tyrolean Pudding Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3113 Pudding with Burnt Almonds—Souffled →

For the Modern Kitchen

A panada-style almond pudding from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen: a stiff flour-and-almond-milk paste enriched with a dozen yolks, lightened with whites, and steamed in lined molds. A few of its terms and quantities need translating before you start.

The hinge: cook the paste until it leaves the panThe flour mixture must be stirred over heat until it pulls away from the sides and bottom in a single mass, as for a choux paste. Underdo it and the pudding will be slack and weep in the mold; the yolks cannot rescue a wet base.
Almond milk means the real thingRanhofer's No. 4 is an almond milk made from scratch: blanched sweet almonds pounded with water and strained, unsweetened and much thicker than modern cartoned almond beverage, which is dilute and often gummed and sweetened. Grinding your own will be closer to what the quantities assume, though the exact proportions have to be guessed, since No. 4 is not given on this page.
Flour and rice flourTen ounces total, five of each by weight. The rice flour is there for tenderness and to keep the paste from turning elastic; do not substitute cornstarch, which sets more brittle.
"Finely pounded almonds" and orange peelPounded almonds is almond flour, or almonds ground fine in a food processor with a little of the sugar to stop them oiling. The peel means the outer zest of one orange, finely grated — no white pith.
Molds and liningIndividual dome molds wider than tall, about 6 to 8 oz each, will give ten servings; butter them well and press rounds of ladyfinger cut with a plain cutter against the sides. Fill only three-quarters full, as the whites lift the pudding considerably.
Poaching and the "slack oven"The bain-marie water should sit at a bare tremble, roughly 180°F, never boiling, with the pan covered. A slack oven is 275-300°F, used here only for a few minutes to dry the surface.
TimingFifty minutes is the time given. Smaller molds will set sooner, so begin testing well before that: the pudding is done when the center is firm to a light press and a skewer comes out clean. Rest five minutes before unmolding, as directed -- turned out immediately they slump.
HateletsA hatelet is a small ornamental skewer. Three graduated rounds of candied pineapple threaded on a cocktail skewer is the whole of it; the garnish is decorative and comes off before eating.
SauceApricot sauce with rum (No. 3001) is essentially sieved apricot jam loosened with syrup and finished with rum. The sauce served separately is the same thinned with almond milk, which softens the color and the sweetness.

A Little History

Pudding léger aux amandes — literally "light almond pudding" — comes from The Epicurean (1894), Charles Ranhofer's enormous record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, where the hot entremets section runs to well over a hundred numbered puddings, fritters and soufflés. The dish belongs to a very old European line: almond milk was a staple of medieval and Renaissance cookery, valued because it stood in for dairy on fast days and kept better than milk in a warm kitchen, and it survived into nineteenth-century French pastry long after its Lenten purpose had faded. What marks this version as high restaurant work of the 1890s is the finishing rather than the pudding itself — the ladyfinger lining, the mirror of rum-spiked apricot, the second sauce sent to table separately, and the hatelet of candied pineapple standing upright in each dome. Those small ornamental skewers were a familiar decorative flourish in grand restaurant service of the period and largely disappeared from ordinary use within a generation.