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Peach Pudding
Three slices white bread without crust; cut them into pieces one-quarter of an inch square. Two tablespoons well-cleaned, small Sultana raisins. One pint can or the equivalent of fresh peaches, cut into one-quarter-inch square pieces, four drops almond flavouring and five drops vanilla essence. Place all the above articles in a vessel and mix well together. Thoroughly clean six small lightly buttered individual pudding moulds, then fill them up with the mixture, being careful not to press the bread in the moulds. Pour the custard in each mould, equally divided. Place the moulds in a sautoire with hot water up to half their height. Place in the hot oven and let steam for thirty minutes. Remove from the oven, unmould, lay them on a hot dish, and serve with a hot rum sauce in a saucebowl, separately.
A bread-and-fruit pudding steamed in a water bath, written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen where the custard and the rum sauce were assumed knowledge. Two things need filling in before you start.
- The custard is not givenThe recipe says "pour the custard in each mould" without ever specifying it, because the book expects you to have a standard sweet custard to hand. A plain pouring custard of about 1 pint milk, 3 eggs and 2 tablespoons sugar will fill six moulds; nothing in the original tells you its proportions, so treat that as a reconstruction rather than the author's figure.
- Oven temperature"Hot oven" would ordinarily mean 400-425F, but an egg custard set that hot will curdle and weep even in a water bath. Bake at 325-350F; the bain-marie holds the moulds near the boiling point of water regardless of what the air above them is doing.
- SautoireA shallow straight-sided pan. Any roasting pan or deep baking dish that holds the six moulds with room for water halfway up their sides will do. Pour the water in hot so the custard starts setting promptly.
- Individual pudding mouldsSmall dariole or timbale moulds; something in the region of 5-6 fl oz is the usual size, though the quantities here may want larger. The original says only "small individual pudding moulds" and does not describe their shape. Standard ramekins will work, though the puddings will unmould as squat discs.
- DonenessThirty minutes is realistic for moulds of that size, but judge by the custard: it should be just set at the centre with only a slight wobble. Overbaked, it turns granular and will slump when turned out. Let the moulds rest five minutes before unmoulding so the pudding firms enough to hold together.
- Sultanas and canned peaches"well-cleaned" refers to picking over dried fruit for stems and grit, unnecessary with modern packaged sultanas. The "one pint can" is a can size rather than a measure of drained fruit; a modern 15-16 oz can is the nearest equivalent, but drained it gives less than a pint of cut peaches, so you may want more. If using fresh, they should be ripe and peeled, since thirty minutes will not soften firm fruit.
- Almond flavouringFour drops of almond extract is a genuinely small amount and worth respecting. Modern extract is potent, and the almond is meant to sit behind the peach rather than announce itself.
- Don't pack the mouldsThe instruction not to press the bread down is the hinge of the dish. The cubes need to stay loose so the custard can flow between them and set into a single tender mass; compressed bread gives you a dense, sodden plug.
- Yield and sauceSix individual puddings. The rum sauce is served separately and hot -- typically a sweetened custard or a butter-and-sugar sauce spiked with rum, again assumed rather than specified here.
Peach pudding of this kind belongs to the long European tradition of stretching stale white bread with milk, eggs and fruit -- the same logic as English bread-and-butter pudding, in which cubed or sliced bread is bound in custard and set in a water bath. What marks this version as professional hotel cookery is its assumptions: individual moulds rather than one dish, a sautoire and a saucebowl, flavouring counted out in drops, and a base custard and rum sauce taken as read because every cook on the line already had both in production. The canned peaches fit the same picture: a chef could specify "one pint can or the equivalent of fresh" and treat the two as interchangeable.