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Indian Pudding Souffle
Place four ounces sugar in a copper basin with teaspoon water, set the basin on the fire and briskly stir with wooden spoon until sugar is a nice brown colour, then add two ounces peeled and shredded almonds and rapidly stir for half a minute, then mask the interior of a plain quart pudding mould with it. Place two gills milk in saucepan with a tablespoon sugar and half teaspoon vanilla essence, then, as soon as it comes to a boil, dredge in two ounces farina, sharply mixing while adding it, let boil for five minutes, remove to a table and let cool a little, add four egg yolks, sharply mix. Beat up the whites of the four eggs to a stiff froth and gradually add to the preparation, lightly mixing meanwhile. Drop the preparation into the mould, lay in a saucepan, pour hot water in the pan up to half the height of the mould and set in the oven for thirty-five minutes. Remove, unmould the pudding on a hot dish, pour rum sauce over and serve.
Thursday, Third Week of September
A caramel-lined steamed soufflé pudding, closer to a semolina soufflé than to any American Indian pudding. The measurements are given by weight in ounces and by gill, and the oven temperature is left out entirely.
- The unitsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of milk is one cup. Four ounces of sugar is a generous half cup, two ounces of almonds about half a cup shredded, and two ounces of farina roughly six tablespoons.
- Farina, not Indian mealDespite the title, nothing here is cornmeal — farina is the fine wheat middlings sold today as Cream of Wheat, and fine semolina behaves the same way. Coarse or instant grains will not set the same body.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A moderate oven, 350F, is right for a soufflé pudding in a water bath; hotter and the edges set into rubber before the centre rises.
- The hinge: masking the mouldCaramel with almonds in it stiffens within seconds of leaving the heat. Have the quart mould warmed and at your elbow, tip the hot mixture in and rotate immediately to coat the sides. If it seizes, return the mould briefly to low heat rather than reheating the caramel in the pan.
- VesselsA copper basin is only for even heat on the caramel; any heavy stainless or enamelled pan works. "Lay in a saucepan" with hot water halfway up means a bain-marie — a roasting pan is easier to lift out.
- Adding the whitesCool the farina base until it is warm rather than hot before the yolks go in, and fold the whites in three additions. The mixture is stiff, so slacken it with a spoonful of the whites first or you will knock the air out fighting it.
- UnmouldingRun a knife round, invert onto a warmed dish and lift the mould straight up. Any caramel clinging inside can be loosened with a few seconds over heat. Do this promptly — the pudding sinks as it cools.
- The rum sauceNo recipe is given for it. A thin custard or a sugar-and-butter sauce finished with rum would suit; the pudding itself is only lightly sweetened apart from the caramel.
- YieldA quart mould serves four to six as dessert. Serve at once.
The name is the puzzle: American Indian pudding is a slow-baked dish of cornmeal, molasses and milk, and there is neither cornmeal nor molasses here. What this recipe describes is the classic hotel soufflé pudding — a thick milk-and-grain panada enriched with yolks, lightened with whites, baked in a caramel-masked mould and turned out — of the sort that filled the sweet course in professional kitchens on both sides of the Atlantic around 1900. Quite how the name attached itself to a farina version is unclear. The almond caramel lining is the technique the French call pralin, and lining a mould with it so that it becomes both crust and sauce suits a cook working fast with a copper pan and a wooden spoon. That the recipe gives weights in ounces, liquid in gills and no oven temperature at all tells you who it was written for: someone trained in a kitchen, judging the oven by hand.