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Queen's Pudding
Mrs. A. P. Wightman.
One quart of sweet milk, one pint of bread crumbs, five eggs, one teaspoon of corn starch, one large or two small lemons, one cup of common sugar, and one of pulverized sugar; bring the milk to a scald, pour it over the bread crumbs and let it cool; beat the yolks of the eggs and one cup of common sugar together, and mix in the corn starch also; just before putting in to bake, add the grated rind of the lemon, and bake twenty minutes. Beat the whites of the eggs and one cup of pulverized sugar together, and add the lemon juice; when the pudding is done, put this on the top and set it in the oven again for a few minutes; to be eaten cold.
A classic bread-and-custard pudding under a lemon meringue, written for a cook who already knew what a pudding dish looked like. The gaps worth filling are oven temperature, sugar terminology, and a bake time that will not set this much custard.
- The hinge: the crumbs must soak coldScalded milk poured over the crumbs and left to cool does two things — it softens the bread completely and it keeps the hot milk from scrambling the yolks when they go in. Do not shortcut it by mixing everything warm.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Bake the custard at 350F; finish the meringue at 350F for 10-15 minutes for a pale set, or briefly at 400F if you want colour.
- Twenty minutes is not enoughA quart of milk with five yolks in a deep dish needs roughly 40-50 minutes at 350F, until the centre barely trembles. Twenty minutes would only be plausible in a very wide, shallow dish. Judge by set, not clock.
- "Common sugar" and "pulverized sugar"Common sugar is ordinary granulated. Pulverized was sugar ground fine at home or bought as such; modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch, so superfine (caster) sugar is the closer match for the meringue.
- Bread crumbsA pint of soft crumbs torn or rubbed from stale white bread, not dry packaged crumbs, which are far denser by volume and will give a heavy, pasty pudding.
- Corn starchA single teaspoon in a quart of milk is far too little to thicken anything; its purpose here is unclear. Whisk it into the yolks and sugar as directed, or it will lump.
- Lemon rind timingThe recipe holds the zest back until "just before putting in to bake." No reason is given, though zest oils do dull if they sit in a mixture. Grate it at the last moment and take only the yellow.
- The meringueFive whites with a cup of sugar and the juice of one or two lemons is a slack meringue; add the juice a spoonful at a time after the sugar is fully beaten in, or it will not hold peaks. Spread it to the edges of the dish so it seals and does not shrink back.
- Yield and servingNo yield is given; a quart of milk with a pint of crumbs will serve about eight. The instruction to eat it cold is sound — the custard firms as it cools and the lemon comes forward.
This is essentially queen of puddings, an English dish built on the same thrift as bread pudding: stale crumbs, milk, and eggs stretched into something worth putting on a table. The English version usually carries a layer of jam between custard and meringue; Mrs. Wightman's leaves it out and lets lemon do the work in both the base and the topping. The name is generally traced to Victorian England rather than to any particular queen, and the three-layer construction — soaked crumb custard, flavouring, meringue — was in circulation by the time The Home Cook Book was collecting subscribers' recipes in the 1870s. That it appears here under a contributor's name is typical of the book: these were community fundraising cookbooks assembled from recipes submitted by their contributors, oven temperatures assumed and all.