Beat four eggs thoroughly, mix with them half a pint of milk, and pass them through a sieve, add them by degrees to half a pound of flour, and when the batter is perfectly smooth, thin it with another half pint of milk. Shake out a wet pudding cloth, flour it well, pour the batter in, leave it room to swell, tie it securely, and put it immediately into plenty of fast-boiling water. An hour and ten minutes will boil it. Send it to table the instant it is dished, with wine sauce, a hot compôte of fruit, or raspberry vinegar: this last makes a delicious pudding sauce. Unless the liquid be added very gradually to the flour, and the mixture be well stirred and beaten as each portion is poured to it, the batter will not be smooth: to render it very light, a portion of the whites of the eggs, or the whole of them, should be whisked to a froth and stirred into it just before it is put into the cloth.
Flour, 1/2 lb.; eggs, 4; salt, 3/4 teaspoonful; milk, 1 pint: 1 hour and 10 minutes.
Obs.—Modern taste is in favour of puddings boiled in moulds, but, as we have already stated, they are seldom or ever so light as those which are tied in cloths only.
ANOTHER BATTER PUDDING.
Mix the yolks of three eggs smoothly with three heaped tablespoonsful of flour, thin the batter with new milk until it is of the consistence of cream, whisk the whites of eggs apart, stir them into the batter and boil the pudding in a floured cloth or in a buttered mould or basin for an hour. Before it is served, cut the top quickly into large dice half through the pudding, pour over it a small jarful of fine currant, raspberry, or strawberry jelly, and send it to table without the slightest delay.
Flour, 3 tablespoonsful; eggs, 3; salt, 1/2 teaspoonful; milk, from 1/2 to whole pint: 1 hour.
BLACK-CAP PUDDING.
Make a good light thin batter, and just before it is poured into the cloth stir to it half a pound of currants, well cleaned and dried: these will sink to the lower part of the pudding and blacken the surface. Boil it the usual time, and dish it with the dark side uppermost; send very sweet sauce to table with it. Some cooks butter a mould thickly, strew in the currants, and pour the batter on them, which produces the same appearance as when the ingredients are tied in a cloth.
All batter puddings should be despatched quickly to table when they are once ready to serve, as they speedily become heavy if allowed to wait.