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Pudding, Venus
Butter a quart mould. Ornament with two ounces candied ginger cut into thin strips.
Mix together in a bowl four yolks and the whites of five eggs, one pint milk or cream, two tablespoons rum and four ounces sugar; strain through a cheesecloth into the mould. Place the mould in a pan, with hot water up to half its height. Set in the oven to bake for forty minutes. Remove, let thoroughly cool off and serve.
A baked rum custard turned out of a mould — essentially a crème caramel without the caramel, set instead with candied ginger. The whole thing hinges on gentle heat.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives none. Bake a moulded custard at 325F; anything hotter and the egg proteins tighten and weep, leaving a curdled, watery texture. Forty minutes may run short for a quart mould at that heat, so judge by the centre: it should wobble as a single mass, not ripple.
- The water bathHot water to half the mould's height, as written, and use a towel or folded paper in the bottom of the pan so the mould does not rattle or conduct heat too fast from below. Top up with boiling water if it evaporates.
- Egg proportionFour yolks plus five whites to a pint of liquid is a firm set — the extra white is what makes it strong enough to unmould. Do not substitute five whole eggs; the custard will be richer but softer and may slump.
- Milk or creamCream gives a denser result; whole milk gives a lighter, more quivering custard. Half and half is a reasonable middle. Warming the milk first is not required here since the bake is long and slow.
- Candied gingerTwo ounces is about 1/3 cup of strips. Press them against the buttered sides of the mould so they stick; they will end up on the outside of the turned-out pudding. Rinse off loose sugar first or it dissolves into the custard and streaks it.
- StrainingCheesecloth catches chalazae and any thread of set egg. A fine sieve does the same job faster. Skim the foam off the surface after pouring or the baked top will be pocked.
- Cooling and unmoulding"Thoroughly cool" means several hours, ideally overnight in the refrigerator — a warm custard will not hold its shape. Run a thin knife around the edge, invert onto a plate, and give it a firm downward shake.
- YieldA quart mould serves six to eight. Two tablespoons of rum across that quantity reads as perfume rather than liquor.
Naming puddings and ices after grand or fashionable figures was a nineteenth-century restaurant habit selselrode, Melba, and the rest an the dish itself and told the diner more about the kitchen's aspirations than about what was in the mould. What is under the name here is the standard European baked custard, cooked au bain-marie, a technique that had been the professional answer to the egg's intolerance of direct heat since at least the seventeenth century. The International Cook Book is credited to Alexander Filippini, long of Delmonico's in New York, and the entry has the shape of a professional's note: a mould, a quantity, a time, and no explanation, on the assumption that whoever read it already knew what a set custard looked like. Candied ginger as a lining is the one flourish, and it points at the era's taste for preserved tropical goods as a mark of a well-stocked pantry.