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Wine Pudding
(Germany.) Mix 1 quart of white wine, Angelica, Catawba, or Sauterne, with 1/2 pound sugar, juice and rind of 2 lemons, and a heaping teaspoonful of cornstarch, dissolved in as much water. Boil the wine, add the lemon, the sugar, cornstarch, and well beaten yolks of 7 eggs. Stir but do not let it boil after adding the eggs, pour into a bowl, set on ice, and serve with cream and little cakes.
This is a stirred wine custard in the German Weincreme family — closer to a chilled pouring cream than to a pudding that holds a shape. Everything depends on how the yolks are handled.
- The hinge: temper and hold below a boilLadle some of the hot sweetened wine into the beaten yolks first, then return the mixture to the pan and stir constantly over low heat until it thickens enough to coat a spoon, around 175-180F. Wine is acidic, which makes the yolks set faster and curdle more readily than in a milk custard; a single boil will scramble it.
- Quantities in modern termsOne quart is 4 cups of wine; 1/2 pound of sugar is a generous cup (about 1 1/8 cups granulated). Seven yolks into a quart of liquid gives a thin, pourable cream — this is meant to be spooned or drunk, not sliced.
- The wines namedAngelica and Catawba were sweet American wines of the period, Angelica a fortified California style and Catawba made from a labrusca-type native grape. "Sauterne" without the final s was an American generic label for a domestic white, usually Californian, not the botrytised Sauternes of Bordeaux. Any decent off-dry white — Riesling, Chenin Blanc — gives the intended effect; a very dry wine will need the full measure of sugar or more.
- Lemon rindUse the zest in wide strips pared with a peeler and steep it in the hot wine, then lift it out before the yolks go in. Grated rind left suspended in a thin custard is unpleasant on the tongue.
- The cornstarchA heaping teaspoon in a quart is a very light hand — it is there to stabilise the yolks against the acid rather than to thicken. Slake it in cold water and add it to the wine before the eggs, and give it a minute at a simmer so it loses its raw taste.
- Chilling"Set on ice" means a bowl in an ice bath, stirred until cold, then refrigerated. Cool it quickly rather than leaving it on the counter; the custard will thicken further as it chills.
- AlcoholSome is driven off in the brief boil, but a good deal remains, and the mixture is never boiled again after the eggs go in. This is a distinctly alcoholic dessert and should be treated as such.
- Yield and servingRather more than a quart of finished cream, enough for eight. "Little cakes" would be small dry cakes of the ladyfinger, macaroon or plain sponge-finger sort; the cream is poured over or around them.
Adelaide Keen's With a Saucepan Over the Sea (1902) gathered dishes from correspondents and travellers abroad, and this German entry belongs to the family of wine creams and wine foams — Weincreme, Weinschaum, Weinsuppe — that appear in nineteenth-century German household cookery and are often linked to the older European habit of thickening sweetened wine with eggs that also lies behind Italian zabaglione and English sack posset. What places the recipe in an American kitchen is the list of wines: Angelica and Catawba were American products, the first a sweet fortified wine of California, the second made from a native grape widely planted in Ohio and along the Great Lakes, and "Sauterne" spelled without its s was a common American label for a domestic white. A German dessert has arrived in an American kitchen and quietly picked up American bottles on the way.