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Jelly Pudding
Mrs. C. H. Wheeler.
One quart of milk, one pint of bread crumbs, yolks of four beaten eggs, one-half cup of sugar; bake about half an hour; when cool, spread jelly over the pudding, beat the whites with a little sugar, and spread on top for frosting; set back in the oven a few minutes after the whites have been spread on the pudding; excellent for Sunday dinners, as it may be eaten cold.
This is a soft bread custard under a layer of jelly and meringue commonly known elsewhere as queen of puddings. The custard is the part that needs attention: it is a baked custard, not a cake, and it fails by overheating rather than underbaking.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. A baked custard of this kind wants a moderate oven, about 325-350F today. Custard set above about 350F will curdle and weep, so err toward the lower end.
- Half an hour is optimisticA full quart of milk with only four yolks sets slowly. Expect 45 to 60 minutes at 325F in a 2-quart dish; it is done when the centre jiggles as a set mass rather than sloshing. A water bath is worth the trouble.
- Bread crumbsSoft crumbs torn from stale white bread, not dry packaged crumbs, which will drink the milk and turn the pudding pasty. A pint of loose crumbs is roughly 3 to 4 ounces.
- Scald the milk firstNot stated, but a common approach with bread puddings: heat the milk, pour it over the crumbs, let them swell for ten minutes, then stir in the yolks and sugar. Cold milk soaks into crumbs more slowly and they may stay coarse at the bottom.
- Cool before the jellyThe recipe specifies spreading the jelly "when cool," and there is good reason to follow it: a warm custard will absorb the jelly and the layer disappears. Warm the jelly slightly and beat it smooth so it spreads without tearing the surface.
- The meringueFour whites with about 4 tablespoons of sugar, beaten to soft-to-firm peaks. "A few minutes" in the oven means 10 to 12 minutes at 350F for the meringue to set through and colour; a hotter, briefer bake browns the top while leaving the inside raw and slack.
- Sealing the edgeSpread the meringue right out to the rim of the dish. Meringue that does not touch the sides shrinks and lets syrup from the jelly seep up around it.
- YieldServes six to eight. As the recipe says, it is meant to be eaten cold, and it keeps a day in the refrigerator, though the meringue will begin to bead.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Chicago in the nineteenth century from recipes contributed by named women of Chicago and other cities and towns hence "Mrs. C. H. Wheeler" attached to this one and sold to raise money for the Home for the Friendless. That format explains both the brevity and the practical aside about Sunday dinners: contributors wrote for cooks who already knew how a custard behaved, and a dish that could be finished Saturday and eaten cold on Sunday spared the household work on a day when, by a common convention of the time, cooking was often avoided. The pudding itself is a thrifty English inheritance, a way of using stale bread, surplus milk and the yolks left from some other job, with the whites recovered as meringue so nothing is wasted; the jelly-and-meringue version is generally traced to the mid-nineteenth-century English dish called queen of puddings, which used raspberry or currant jam in the same place.