Home › Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen › A Quick Pudding
A Quick Pudding
Mrs. J. W. D.
One-half pint of milk, one-half pint of cream, three eggs beaten separately, little over one-half pint flour ; season with lemon or vanilla.
This is a batter pudding of the plainest kind, and the original assumes the cook already knows what to do with a batter: beat it, pour it into a buttered dish, and bake it. Almost everything else has to be supplied.
- The measuresA half-pint is here read as a US half-pint, one cup; if the book's measures are imperial it would be nearer 10 fl oz. So: 1 cup milk, 1 cup cream, 3 eggs, and a little over 1 cup flour, giving a batter roughly the consistency of heavy cream. Add the last of the flour by eye rather than strictly by the cup.
- No sugar is listedNineteenth-century batter puddings were often baked unsweetened and served with a sweet sauce, hard sauce or sugar and cream at table. If you want the pudding itself sweet, 2 to 3 tablespoons of sugar beaten into the yolks is in keeping; more than that will make it brown too fast.
- Eggs beaten separatelyThis is the hinge of the recipe. Yolks go in with the milk, cream and flour; the whites are whipped to soft peaks and folded in last. It is the only leavening the pudding has, so mix the batter first, whip the whites at the end, and get it into the oven immediately.
- OvenThe original gives none. Bake at 375F in a buttered 1 1/2-quart dish for 35 to 45 minutes, until set in the centre and puffed and browned at the edges. It will sink as it cools, which is expected.
- Seasoning"Season with lemon or vanilla" most likely means grated zest or a few drops of extract rather than juice, which risks curdling the milk and cream. About a teaspoon of vanilla or the zest of one lemon suits this quantity.
- SaltAssume a pinch was taken for granted. A quarter-teaspoon in the flour keeps the pudding from tasting flat, particularly if you leave it unsweetened.
- YieldServes four to six as a plain dessert, best eaten warm within twenty minutes of leaving the oven.
Batter puddings like this one sit directly in the English tradition that also produced Yorkshire pudding: flour, eggs and milk baked in a hot dish, sweetened or not depending on where in the meal it landed. What marks this as a later, more prosperous version is the cream standing in for half the milk and the eggs beaten separately for lift. The Home Cook Book was compiled from contributions by local cooks, credited by initials, which explains both the attribution to Mrs. J. W. D. and the brevity: she was writing for neighbours who already knew how long a pudding took in their own stoves, and a recipe of this sort was valued precisely because it could be assembled from the day's milk and eggs without waiting on yeast, suet or a long steaming.