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Queen of Puddings
One pint of bread crumbs, one quart milk, four eggs, (the yolks), piece of butter size of an egg, sugar to sweeten, flavour with lemon. When baked, spread with jelly, then the whites of the eggs beaten to a stiff froth, with a little sugar and lemon spread on the top; brown slightly in a hot oven. To be eaten with sugar and cream.
A plain baked bread custard given two toppings: jam and meringue. It works, but the original assumes you know when a custard is set and how hot to run the oven for the meringue.
- The hinge: bake the custard gentlyThe pudding base is a custard thickened by four yolks in a quart of milk, which is a loose ratio. Bake at 325-350F until the centre is just set with a slight wobble, roughly 45 to 60 minutes in a shallow dish; a hotter oven curdles it and weeps liquid under the jelly.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. Melt it into the warm milk rather than dotting it on top.
- A pint of bread crumbsMeasured by volume, not weight: roughly 4 oz of soft fresh crumbs from a day-old loaf. Dry packaged crumbs will absorb far more milk and give a heavy, pasty pudding. Soak the crumbs in the scalded milk for ten minutes before adding the yolks.
- Pint and quartThis book circulated in both Chicago and Toronto editions, so the measures may be American (a quart is 4 cups) or Imperial (a quart is 5 cups). The American reading is the safer one; if the mixture looks thin, hold back some milk.
- "Flavour with lemon"Grated zest of one lemon steeped in the hot milk, or a teaspoon of lemon extract. Some nineteenth-century lemon flavourings were strong oil-based essences, so modern extract may need a slightly heavier hand.
- Spreading the jellyWarm the jelly or jam slightly so it spreads over the hot set custard without tearing the surface. Red currant, raspberry or apricot are the traditional choices.
- "Brown slightly in a hot oven"For meringue that means 400-425F for 5 to 8 minutes, watching it. Beat the whites to soft peaks first, then add about a tablespoon of sugar per white -- the recipe calls only for "a little sugar" -- and beat stiff, or the meringue will bead and weep.
- Yield and servingServes six to eight from a 2-quart dish. The instruction to eat it with sugar and cream is optional by modern taste, since the jelly and meringue already carry the sweetness; serve warm rather than hot, when the custard has firmed.
Queen of Puddings belongs to the large English family of dishes built to use up stale bread and surplus milk, and it is the most dressed-up member of that family: custard below, preserve in the middle, meringue on top. Its name is generally traced to Victorian Britain, and the frequent claim that it was invented for Queen Victoria's court is traditional rather than documented; recipes for bread custards finished with beaten whites appear well before the name attached itself. Its presence in The Home Cook Book, a charity compilation assembled from contributions by North American housekeepers in the 1870s, shows how thoroughly the English nursery-and-parlour pudding had crossed over. The four yolks in the batter and four whites on top are the point of the thing: nothing is wasted, and a cook with bread, milk, eggs and a pot of jam could put something ornamental on the table without a trip to the grocer.