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Marrow Pudding
Finely chop up three ounces raw beef marrow; place it in a basin with three ounces bread crumbs and briskly mix both with a wooden spoon for two minutes, then add two egg yolks, with two ounces sugar; mix again for two minutes longer; add half ounce candied lemon or orange peel, one tablespoon rum and one tablespoon sherry; mix again for a minute. Beat the whites of the two eggs to a stiff froth and gently add to the mixture, lightly mixing meanwhile. Lightly butter six small pudding moulds, then fill them up with the preparation; place the moulds in a roasting pan, pour hot water into the pan up to half the height of the moulds; set in the oven and bake for thirty-five minutes; remove, unmould upon a hot dish. Pour a rum sauce over and serve.
A steamed-baked suet-style pudding that uses beef marrow instead of suet, which gives it a much finer, almost custardy crumb. The whole thing hinges on the marrow being cold and finely chopped rather than melted.
- Getting the marrowAsk a butcher for cut marrow bones (canoe-cut if possible) and scoop the marrow out; 3 oz is roughly the yield of two or three 3-inch beef femur sections. Chill it hard, then chop cold with a heavy knife — warm marrow smears and will render out in the oven instead of holding the crumb open.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no oven temperature; it says only to set the moulds in the oven. Around 350F is the usual modern equivalent for a custard-type pudding baked in a water bath, where the gentle heat keeps the egg from curdling.
- The water bathThe recipe calls for hot water; bringing it to the boil first is a common modern refinement. Pour it into the pan after the pan is on the oven shelf. Half the height of the moulds is as the recipe directs; higher and water works under the puddings when you lift them out.
- Mould sizeSix small pudding moulds means dariole moulds or ramekins of about 4 fl oz each. Butter them thoroughly and, if you want a clean turn-out, dust the butter with fine crumbs or sugar.
- Bread crumbsFresh soft crumbs from a day-old white loaf, not dried packaged crumbs, which absorb far more liquid and will make the puddings dense. Three ounces is roughly 1 1/2 cups loosely packed fresh crumbs.
- Timing and donenessThirty-five minutes suits 4 oz moulds; in anything larger, allow 50 minutes to an hour. The puddings are done when they are just set at the centre and have pulled slightly from the sides — they should still wobble as a whole, not ripple like liquid.
- UnmouldingLet them stand two or three minutes out of the water before turning out. Straight from the bath they are fragile; left much longer they cool and stick.
- The rum sauceNo sauce recipe is given here; the rum sauce would have been made up separately. A period-appropriate version is a sweetened egg-yolk custard or a melted butter-and-sugar sauce finished with rum off the heat, served warm and thin enough to pool around the puddings.
- YieldSix small puddings, one per person, as a dessert course. They are rich; the portion size is deliberate.
Marrow puddings belong to a long English line of enriched crumb puddings — the same family as the marrow-bone pudding of eighteenth-century cookery and the marrow pies that appear in earlier receipt books, where marrow served the role suet plays in a Christmas pudding but with a softer, more delicate result. Marrow was prized rather than tolerated, and roasted marrow bones with toast were a fashionable savoury course well into the nineteenth century. Its appearance in a book called The International Cook Book places it among the enriched moulded desserts of the early 1900s — small puddings, baked in a bain-marie, turned out and sauced with spirits.