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Weimar Pudding
Place in a large bowl two ounces good butter and thoroughly stir with a wooden spoon for ten minutes; then add the yolks of three eggs, one by one, sharply stirring meanwhile; add two ounces grated cocoa, two ounces granulated sugar and one ounce cake or bread crumbs. Mix well for one minute, then add the whites of the three eggs, well beaten up, and gently mix with the skimmer for half minute.
Fill six lightly buttered individual pudding moulds with the preparation; lay the moulds in a tin, pour boiling water up to half their height; set in the hot oven for thirty minutes. Remove, unmould on a hot dish. Pour a chocolate sauce over them and serve.
A small baked chocolate custard-crumb pudding in the German Auflauf manner, built on creamed butter and separated eggs. The hinge is the folding: everything depends on the beaten whites keeping their air.
- Weights, not cupsTwo ounces butter is 4 tablespoons (half a stick); two ounces sugar is a scant 1/3 cup; one ounce crumbs is roughly 1/4 to 1/3 cup depending on how dry and fine they are. A kitchen scale saves guesswork here, since the crumb weight in particular changes the texture.
- "Grated cocoa"In 1900s American usage this generally means solid unsweetened chocolate or a cocoa cake grated on a box grater, not the loose Dutch-process powder sold today. Two ounces of chopped or grated unsweetened chocolate is the closer reading; two ounces of modern cocoa powder (about 2/3 cup) would make the batter dry and bitter.
- Ten minutes of stirringCreaming butter alone by hand for ten minutes is what a stand mixer does in two or three on medium. The butter should be pale and aerated before any yolk goes in, or the mixture will break when the yolks are added one at a time.
- The skimmerThe recipe folds with a skimmer, a flat perforated spoon; a rubber spatula does the same job. Half a minute of gentle folding is the intent: stop while a few streaks of white remain rather than mixing to uniformity.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe says only "hot oven," but in a water bath the puddings set gently in any case. Around 375F for 30 minutes suits small individual moulds; they are done when risen, just firm at the centre, and beginning to pull from the sides.
- The water bathBoiling water halfway up the moulds, poured after the tin is on the oven rack, prevents both slopping and a curdled edge. A folded towel or sheet of parchment under the moulds keeps them from rattling and from scorching on the tin.
- UnmouldingThese are soufflé-like and will sink as they cool, so unmould within a minute or two of leaving the oven. Run a thin knife around the rim, invert onto a warmed dish, and sauce immediately.
- Yield and sauceSix small puddings, one per person as written. No chocolate sauce is given: a simple one is 4 ounces chopped semisweet chocolate melted into 1/2 cup hot cream, thinned with a spoonful of milk if it tightens.
Nineteenth-century restaurant cookery named dishes after cities and courts as a matter of routine, and a "Weimar" pudding belongs to that habit rather than to any documented Thuringian original. The construction itself is genuinely German, though. Baked puddings of creamed butter, separated eggs, grated chocolate and a little breadcrumb to bind are the standard Schokoladenauflauf or Pudding of German and Austrian household manuals, where stale crumbs did the work that flour or starch does elsewhere and nothing was wasted.