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Batter Pudding
Mrs. H. L. Bristol.
One pint of milk, four eggs, the yolks and whites beaten separately, ten tablespoons of sifted flour, a little salt; beat in the whites of the eggs the last thing before baking; bake half an hour.
A plain baked batter pudding of the Yorkshire type, sweetened only by whatever sauce goes over it. The recipe assumes you know the rest, so a few gaps need filling.
- No oven temperature givenThe recipe assumes the cook knows her range. A hot oven, in the region of 400-425F, is the usual modern equivalent for a batter pudding, and many cooks preheat the dish with a little butter or drippings first, though this recipe does not say to. A cool oven risks a dense, eggy slab rather than a risen one.
- Ten tablespoons of flourThat is a scant 5/8 cup, roughly 65-70 g of sifted flour. The resulting batter is very thin, thinner than pancake batter, which is what gives the steam-driven rise.
- The hinge is the whites"Beat in the whites the last thing before baking" is the whole method. Fold them in and get the dish into the oven immediately; if the batter stands, the foam collapses and the pudding will not lift.
- Beating the whitesTake them to soft peaks, not stiff and dry. Stiff whites resist folding into a thin batter and leave streaks that bake into rubbery patches.
- Do not open the ovenHalf an hour is the recipe's own time. Opening the door early can cause the pudding to sink, so leave it alone until it looks set, browned and puffed.
- The dishA shallow earthenware or metal dish about 9 by 9 inches, or a deep pie plate, suits this quantity. Deep, narrow dishes bake unevenly and stay wet in the middle.
- Yield and servingServes about four to six. Period cookbooks commonly suggest a sweet sauce with baked batter puddings -- a lemon or wine sauce, or sugar and cream -- though this recipe specifies none; serve it straight from the oven, as it deflates quickly.
Batter pudding is one of the older English puddings: flour, milk and eggs, cooked in a dripping pan beneath roasting meat so the fat and juices fell into it, and also baked on its own or boiled in a cloth. The same sort of batter, baked under beef, is what came to be called Yorkshire pudding. In American community cookbooks such as this one, batter pudding usually appears among the sweets, served with a sugar or wine sauce, rather than with the meat. Separating the eggs, as here, gives a lighter result than beating everything together. The attribution to Mrs. H. L. Bristol is typical of the genre: such books were generally compiled as fundraisers from members' household receipts, with the contributor's name attached to each.