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Pudding of Hazelnuts
(Budino di nocciuole) Shell half a pound of hazelnuts in warm water and dry them well at the sun or on the fire, then grind them very fine, together with sugar, of a weight somewhat less than the nuts. Put one quart of milk on the fire, and when it begins to boil, put two third lb. lady fingers or macaroons crumbed and let it boil for five minutes, adding a small piece of butter. Rub everything through a sieve and put back on the fire with the nuts to dissolve the sugar. Let it cool and add six eggs, first the yolks, then the white beaten, pour in a mold greased with butter and sprinkled with bread crumbs ground fine. The mold must not be all full. Bake in the oven and serve cold.
This dose will be sufficient for eight or ten persons. 183
A baked hazelnut custard thickened with crumbed ladyfingers rather than flour. The measurements are all by weight, which makes it easy to scale, and the method is closer to a bread pudding than to a modern panna cotta or budino.
- The hinge: temper the eggsThe milk-and-crumb base must be cooled before the six eggs go in, exactly as written. Adding them to hot liquid will scramble the yolks and leave threads of cooked egg that no sieve will hide at that stage.
- "Shell in warm water"This most likely means loosening the bitter brown skins rather than cracking the shells. Hazelnut skins do not slip as readily as almond skins in water, so toasting at 350F for 10-12 minutes and rubbing them in a towel is the more reliable modern approach and gives more flavour.
- Grinding nuts with sugarThe sugar is not incidental. It absorbs the oil released as the nuts break down and keeps them from turning into hazelnut butter in a food processor. Pulse the nuts and sugar together, in short bursts, to a fine meal.
- WeightsHalf a pound of hazelnuts is about 8 oz (225 g); the sugar is only specified as "somewhat less," so allow roughly 6-7 oz (170-200 g). Two thirds of a pound of ladyfingers is about 10-11 oz. Italian amaretti will give a marked almond note; plain savoiardi keep the hazelnut forward.
- OvenNo temperature is given because none could be. Treat it as a custard: 325-350F, the mold set in a pan of hot water, roughly 50-70 minutes depending on depth, until the centre is set but still trembling. A dry oven at high heat will curdle it.
- Why the mold is not filledThe beaten whites make the pudding rise as it bakes. Leave a good inch of headroom, and butter and crumb the mold thoroughly so it will turn out cleanly once cold.
- ServingIt states eight to ten portions. Serving cold is not a suggestion — the custard needs several hours in the refrigerator to firm enough to unmold and slice.
The Italian Cook Book (Maria Gentile, 1919) drew heavily on Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene, and the budini section shows it: the numbered format, the confident yield estimate, the phrase "this dose will be sufficient for." A budino in nineteenth-century Italian usage generally meant a moulded pudding set with eggs, closer to an English baked custard than to the loose spoonable dessert the word suggests today, and crumbed biscuits sometimes served as its base. Hazelnuts are strongly associated with Piedmont's Langhe hills, though the trade there expanded chiefly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and Campania's prominence is older — and the instruction to dry the nuts "at the sun or on the fire" is a reminder that the book was written for kitchens where the two were interchangeable options.