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Raspberry and Currant Pudding
Place in a bowl two ounces bread crumbs, two ounces picked currants, four tablespoons raspberry jam, two ounces granulated sugar, one teaspoon Maraschino, half ounce flour, one gill milk and the yolks of three eggs. Briskly mix for five minutes with a wooden spoon, then beat up the three egg whites to a stiff froth and add to the preparation; gently mix for a minute. Fill up six small lightly buttered pudding moulds, place them in a pastry tin and pour boiling water up to half the height of the moulds. Set in the oven for twenty minutes. Remove, unmould on a dish, pour a raspberry sauce over them and serve.
A small steamed-baked pudding in the French style, set in a water bath rather than a steamer. The batter is loose and depends entirely on the whipped whites, so the folding step is where it succeeds or fails.
- Fold, do not mixThe five minutes of brisk beating is for the yolk base only. Once the whites go in, cut and fold for under a minute; the puddings rise on air alone, with only half an ounce of flour for structure.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fluid ounces. The British imperial gill is 5 fluid ounces, and either amount works here, though the smaller gives a firmer set.
- Weights in ouncesTwo ounces of breadcrumbs is roughly a cup of fresh soft crumbs, or half that by volume if dried. Two ounces of sugar is a scant third of a cup, and half an ounce of flour about two tablespoons.
- "Picked currants"Genuinely ambiguous. It may mean fresh red currants stripped from their stems, which suits the raspberry pairing, or dried Zante currants picked over for stalks and grit. Dried currants give a steadier pudding; fresh ones release juice and loosen the batter.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature, only 'set in the oven'; a moderate oven, in the region of 350F, is the usual modern reading. The boiling water poured to half the height of the moulds keeps the outside from setting hard before the centres cook.
- The mouldsSix small dariole moulds or ramekins of about 4 to 5 fluid ounces each. Butter them lightly. The recipe says to fill them up, though leaving a little headroom guards against the risen tops spilling and against a ragged unmoulding.
- Timing and donenessTwenty minutes is right for small moulds. The puddings should be just set and springy at the centre; overcooked, they weep and shrink from the sides. Let them stand two or three minutes before turning out.
- MaraschinoA dry cherry-stone liqueur, not the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. One teaspoon is a background note; kirsch is the nearest substitute.
- The sauceNo recipe is given. Raspberry jam thinned with water or a little lemon juice and passed through a sieve is a plausible reading. Serves six.
Puddings of this kind — breadcrumbs, eggs, jam and a spoonful of liqueur, baked in small buttered moulds in a bain-marie — sit at the meeting point of English pudding-making and French restaurant practice, which is exactly where a book called The International Cook Book wanted to stand. The breadcrumb base is thoroughly English and thrifty, a way of turning stale bread into a dessert; the individual dariole moulds, the water bath and the poured sauce are hotel-kitchen habits associated with France. If the currants are fresh rather than dried, raspberry and currant is a pairing that follows the season: the two ripen together in northern gardens, and the currant's sharpness cuts the sweetness of raspberry jam. The teaspoon of maraschino is a period signature — Dalmatian marasca cherry liqueur was in use as a flavouring in professional kitchens around 1900, used in tiny amounts much as vanilla extract is now.