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Diplomatic Pudding
Place in a basin two ounces bread crumbs, one and a half ounces fine sugar, half ounce butter, one ounce picked currants, half ounce finely hashed sweet almonds, three egg yolks and one tablespoon maraschino. Mix all well together for two minutes with a wooden spoon. Then fill six lightly buttered individual pudding moulds with the preparation. Lay the moulds in a tin pan, pour in boiling water up to half their height; set in the oven, and after thirty minutes remove, unmould on a hot dish; pour a hot rum sauce over the pudding and serve.
A small baked custard-crumb pudding in the French repertoire, given in ounces for six dariole moulds. The mixture is stiff rather than pourable, and the water bath is what keeps it tender.
- Weights in modern terms2 oz breadcrumbs is about 1 cup fresh fine crumbs (55 g); 1 1/2 oz sugar is 3 tablespoons; 1/2 oz butter is 1 tablespoon; 1 oz currants is a scant 3 tablespoons; 1/2 oz almonds is about 2 tablespoons chopped. Weighing is more reliable than volume here, since the crumb quantity governs the texture.
- Currants"Picked currants" means dried Zante currants with stems and grit removed, not fresh redcurrants. Modern packaged currants need only a rinse, and a brief soak in warm water or a little of the maraschino plumps them.
- Sweet almondsThe word "sweet" distinguishes them from bitter almonds, which older kitchens used for flavouring and which are not sold as food today. Use blanched almonds, chopped very fine so they disperse through a small mould.
- MaraschinoThis means maraschino liqueur, the clear cherry-kernel spirit from Dalmatia, not the pink syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Kirsch is the closest substitute; a jarred-cherry syrup will make the pudding cloying.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe says only 'set in the oven'; a moderate oven, roughly 325-350F, suits it. Higher than that and the yolks in so small a mould will curdle at the edges before the centre sets.
- The water bathBoiling water to half the height of the moulds is the hinge of the recipe. Add the water after the pan is in the oven if it is easier, keep it below a simmer, and lay a sheet of buttered foil loosely over the moulds so the tops do not skin.
- Butter the moulds properlyUse small dariole or ramekin moulds; the mixture comes to only a couple of tablespoons per mould. Butter them and dust with fine crumbs or sugar. The pudding is soft when hot; let the moulds stand a minute or two off the heat before turning out, or they will slump.
- DonenessThirty minutes is about right for moulds this small, but judge by a knife inserted at the centre coming out clean and the pudding just pulling from the sides. Larger moulds want longer.
- The rum sauceThe book expects a separate sauce. A simple version is sugar and butter creamed with an egg yolk and let down with hot water or milk, thickened over low heat and finished with dark rum off the fire; do not boil it once the rum is in. Yield is six small puddings, enough for six at the end of a full meal.
Pudding diplomate is a fixture of nineteenth-century French professional cookery: a moulded pudding of bread, sponge fingers or crumbs bound with egg, studded with dried and candied fruit and scented with maraschino or kirsch, usually sent out with a rum, apricot or custard sauce. The name is generally traced to the grand diplomatic dinners of the period rather than to any single cook or occasion, and it belongs to the same habit of naming dishes after offices and titles that gave us a la financiere and a la royale. Cold, moulded versions of the dish were also current alongside baked ones.