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Frankfort Pudding
Place in a bowl four ounces butter and sharply work it with a wooden spoon until well lightened, then add, one by one, four egg yolks, and sharply stir with the spoon while adding them; add two ounces finely chopped, peeled almonds, two ounces sugar, two ounces rye bread crumbs, one ounce chopped candied lemon peel, half teaspoon vanilla essence, one saltspoon ground cinnamon, half saltspoon salt, and sharply stir five minutes. Beat the whites of the four eggs to a stiff froth and add to the preparation, gently mix, then drop preparation into a quart pudding mould. Set the mould in the oven thirty minutes. Remove, unmould on a large dish, pour a cherry sauce over and serve.
A rich German-style baked pudding built on creamed butter, egg yolks, ground almonds and rye crumbs rather than flour. The method is straightforward; the archaic measures and the missing oven temperature are what need translating.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So: 1/4 tsp cinnamon, 1/8 tsp salt.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A butter-and-egg pudding of this kind wants a moderate oven, 350F, for the stated thirty minutes; a quart mould may need closer to 40 minutes. It is done when a skewer comes out clean and the centre is just set.
- Butter temperature is the hinge"Sharply work it until well lightened" means the butter must be soft enough to whip to a pale cream before any yolk goes in. Cold butter will not take the yolks and the batter will break; add the yolks one at a time as directed.
- Rye bread crumbsUse dry, fine crumbs from a plain sour rye or pumpernickel, not fresh crumbs from a soft sandwich loaf. The rye is doing the work of flour here and its flavour is the point of the pudding.
- Peeled almondsThat is blanched almonds, skins slipped off in hot water. "Finely chopped" in this context is closer to a coarse meal than to slivers; a few pulses in a food processor with a spoonful of the sugar keeps them from oiling.
- Folding the whitesFive minutes of hard stirring makes a stiff, heavy base. Slacken it with a spoonful of the beaten whites before folding in the rest, or the froth will collapse and the pudding will bake dense.
- The mouldA quart pudding mould, well buttered and dusted with more rye crumbs so it turns out cleanly. Any quart charlotte mould, pudding basin or deep round tin will do; a decorated mould with fine detail will not release this batter reliably.
- Yield and sauceA quart mould serves roughly four to six. The recipe specifies only "a cherry sauce"; the usual reading is stoned cherries, fresh or bottled, cooked down with sugar and a little of their juice and thickened lightly with arrowroot or cornstarch. A splash of kirsch would not be out of keeping.
The name simply marks the dish as being in the manner of Frankfurt, and everything in it points to German and Austrian baking: butter and eggs creamed to a foam, ground almonds and dried breadcrumbs standing in for flour, candied lemon peel, cinnamon, and a sour-cherry sauce over the top. Puddings and tortes bound with breadcrumbs rather than flour were a mainstay of Central European kitchens, and using rye crumbs rather than white ones is a frugal, regional touch that also gives the pudding its faintly sour, malty background. It appears here because The International Cook Book, compiled by Alexander Filippini, a chef long associated with Delmonico's in New York, set out to gather national dishes from across Europe and beyond for American cooks, and it makes room for exactly this sort of German household sweet. The pairing of almond-and-crumb pudding with cherries is old and widespread in German-speaking Europe, though the reason for it is a matter of guesswork; one plausible surmise is the abundance of sour cherries preserved every summer for winter use.