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Pudding of Roasted Almonds
(Budino di mandorle tostate) Milk, one quart.
Sugar, three and a half ounces.
Sweet almonds, two ounces.
Lady-finger biscuits, two ounces.
Three eggs.
First prepare the almonds, that is to say skin them in warm water and toast them on the fire over a plate of iron or a stone, then grind very fine. Boil the sugar and the lady-fingers, broken in little pieces in the milk, mixing well. After half an hour of boiling, keeping always stirred, rub the mixture through a sieve. Then add the toasted and ground almonds. When it is cold add the beaten eggs, pour it in a smooth mold, whose bottom will be covered with a film of liquified sugar and cook in a double boiler, that is to say put the mold well closed in a kettle full of boiling water.
When cooked let it cool and place in ice-box before serving.
A caramel-lined almond custard in the Artusi mould: milk cooked down with sugar and crushed savoiardi, enriched with toasted almonds and eggs, then set gently in a water bath. The hinge is temperature — the milk mixture must be genuinely cold before the eggs go in, or you get sweet scrambled egg.
- Quantities in modern termsOne quart is 4 cups (about 950 ml) of whole milk; 3½ oz sugar is a scant ½ cup; 2 oz almonds is roughly ⅓ to ½ cup whole; 2 oz lady-fingers is roughly 5 to 7 standard savoiardi. Three eggs for a quart of milk is a loose set, which is why the milk is boiled down first.
- Lady-fingersItalian savoiardi — dry, crisp, sold in packets — not the soft sponge lady-fingers used for trifle. Dry ones dissolve into the milk and thicken it; soft ones add water and sugar and little else.
- Toasting the almondsBlanch in hot water, slip the skins, dry them, then toast in a dry skillet or at 350F until they smell nutty and colour lightly. The "plate of iron or a stone" is simply a dry hot surface. Grind fine but stop before they turn to paste.
- The half-hour boilThis is a reduction, not a gentle infusion. Expect the quart to cook down by roughly a third and thicken noticeably; stir constantly and use a heavy pan, since milk and sugar scorch readily. Sieving afterwards catches any skin or biscuit lumps.
- The caramel"A film of liquified sugar" means dry caramel: melt a few tablespoons of sugar until amber, pour into the mould and tilt to coat the base. It sets hard, then dissolves during cooking into the sauce that runs out when you turn the pudding out.
- Cold before the eggsLet the milk mixture cool to room temperature or below before beating in the eggs. Added hot, the eggs curdle instantly and the custard will be grainy no matter how gently it is afterwards cooked.
- The water bath"Mold well closed" means covered — foil or a tight lid keeps condensation off the surface. The old method steams it on the stovetop in a kettle of boiling water; a 325F oven with the mould in a roasting pan of hot water is easier to control. Either way keep the water at a bare tremble, not a rolling boil, or the custard puffs and weeps.
- Doneness and yieldAround 50 to 70 minutes for a 1½-quart mould: set at the edges, a slight wobble at the centre, an inserted knife coming out clean. Chill thoroughly — several hours at least — before unmoulding. Serves six to eight.
The Italian Cook Book (1919), compiled by Maria Gentile for an American readership, belongs to the world of Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene, the 1891 volume that did more than any other book to give a unified Italy a shared domestic cookery. This budino belongs to a large family of Italian moulded puddings that sit between the French crème caramel and the older biancomangiare: milk thickened with something starchy — here crushed savoiardi, elsewhere rice, semolina or breadcrumbs — sweetened, bound with a few eggs and turned out of a caramel-lined mould. Toasted almonds are often taken as a southern and Sicilian signature, though almond sweets were widespread in Italy, and almond milk long predates the arrival of chocolate or coffee flavourings. The instruction to toast the nuts on "a plate of iron or a stone" suggests a recipe written for a hearth kitchen and only lightly translated for the American stove.