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Chocolate Pudding
Three tablespoons grated chocolate, one gill cold milk, one ounce powdered sugar, half ounce melted butter, half ounce sifted flour, two egg yolks, the whites of two beaten-up eggs, half ounce bread crumbs and half teaspoon vanilla essence. Place the chocolate and milk in a small saucepan, stir a little and just let come to a boil on a slow fire. Mix in another small saucepan the butter and flour, heat well without browning, briskly stirring meanwhile. Pour into this the chocolate-milk and all other ingredients and stir well for two minutes.
Lightly butter six small pudding moulds, fill them with this preparation. Lay them in a small pastry pan; pour in hot water up to half the height of the moulds. Set in a moderate oven to bake for twenty minutes. Take from the oven. Unmould on a hot dish with a folded napkin and serve with a Sabayon sauce separately.
A small baked chocolate custard-soufflé, six ramekins' worth, cooked in a water bath. The instructions collapse several steps into one sentence, so the order matters more than the wording suggests.
- Fold the whites, don't stir themThe text says to pour in "all other ingredients and stir well for two minutes," but the beaten whites are what lifts these puddings. Stir the yolks, sugar, crumbs and vanilla into the warm chocolate base, let it cool to lukewarm, then fold the whites in with a spatula in two additions.
- A gillHalf a cup of milk. If you are working from a British copy of the measure it is 5 fluid ounces rather than 4, and the extra two tablespoons make little practical difference here.
- Ounces are weightsOne ounce of powdered sugar is about 2 tablespoons if it is the fine granulated sugar the period meant, nearer 4 tablespoons if you use modern confectioners' sugar; half an ounce of butter is 1 tablespoon; half an ounce of flour is a scant 2 tablespoons; half an ounce of breadcrumbs is roughly 1/4 cup of soft fresh crumbs.
- Grated chocolatePeriod recipes mean a hard block of plain or unsweetened chocolate, grated so it melts fast in the milk. Three tablespoons grated is about 3/4 ounce chopped; a bittersweet bar works, in which case cut the sugar slightly.
- Moderate ovenAround 350F. Twenty minutes suits the small moulds this quantity fills; the batter divides into only two or three fluid ounces apiece. The puddings should be set at the edge and barely trembling at the centre.
- The water bathUse boiling water from the kettle, poured to halfway up the moulds after the pan is already in the oven, and do not let it reach a rolling boil during baking or the outsides will grain.
- UnmouldingRest the moulds a minute or two out of the oven, then run a knife round and turn out. They will sink a little, which is normal. The folded napkin in the original is the conventional period way of dressing a hot dish for such moulds.
- Sabayon sauceEgg yolks, sugar and a sweet wine, Marsala or Madeira, whisked over simmering water until thick and foamy, served warm and loose. If you would rather not make it, lightly sweetened whipped cream will stand in.
- YieldSix small moulds, one per person, and they must go to the table promptly.
Chocolate as a baked pudding rather than a drink became common in the nineteenth century, when the cocoa presses and roller mills of European chocolate works made hard eating chocolate cheap and consistent enough to grate by the spoonful. The method here follows professional French practice: a roux thickened with milk, enriched with yolks, lightened with whites, baked au bain-marie in individual moulds and turned out -- the same structure as a hot souffle pudding, only firm enough to stand. A sabayon served apart is the sort of finish associated with hotel and restaurant kitchens, where the sauce would have been whisked to order.