Bread-crumbs, 6 oz.; new milk, 1 quart; sugar, 4 oz.; eggs, 5; cocoa-nut, 2 oz. (or rind, 1 large lemon, and 1 oz. butter); slightest pinch of salt: to stand 2 hours. Baked in gentle oven full 3/4 hour.
Obs.—When a very sweet pudding is liked, the proportion of sugar may be increased.
ALMOND PUDDING.
On two ounces of fine bread-crumbs pour a pint of boiling cream, and let them remain until nearly cold, then mix them very gradually with half a pound of sweet and six bitter almonds pounded to the smoothest paste, with a little orange-flower water, or with a few drops of spring water, just to prevent their oiling; stir to them by degrees the well-beaten yolks of seven and the whites of three eggs, six ounces of sifted sugar, and four of clarified butter; turn the mixture into a very clean stewpan, and stir it without ceasing over a slow fire until it becomes thick, but on no account allow it to boil. When it is tolerably cool add a glass of brandy, or half a one of noyau, pour the pudding into a dish lined with very thin puff paste, and bake it half an hour in a moderate oven.
Bread-crumbs, 2 oz.; cream, 1 pint; pounded almonds, 1/2 lb.; bitter almonds, 6; yolks of 7, whites of 3 eggs; sugar, 6 oz.; butter, 4 oz.; brandy, 1 wineglassful, or 1/2 glass of noyau: 1/2 hour, moderate oven.
THE YOUNG WIFE’S PUDDING.
(Author’s Receipt.)
Break separately into a cup four perfectly sweet eggs, and with the point of a small three-pronged fork clear them from the specks. Throw them, as they are done, into a large basin, or a bowl, and beat them up lightly for four or five minutes, then add by degrees two ounces and a half of pounded sugar, with a very small pinch of salt, and whisk the mixture well, holding the fork rather loosely between the thumb and fingers; next, grate in the rind of a quite fresh lemon, or substitute for it a tablespoonful of lemon-brandy, or of orange-flower water, which should be thrown in by degrees, and stirred briskly to the eggs. Add a pint of cold new milk, and pour the pudding into a well buttered dish. Slice some stale bread, something more than a quarter of an inch thick, and with a very small cake-cutter cut sufficient rounds from it to cover the top of the pudding; butter them thickly with good butter; lay them, with the dry side undermost, upon the pudding, sift sugar thickly on them, and set the dish gently into a Dutch or American oven, which should be placed at the distance of a foot or more from a moderate fire. An hour of very slow baking will be just sufficient to render the pudding firm throughout; but should the fire be fierce, or the oven placed too near it, the receipt will fail.
Obs.—We give minute directions for this dish, because though simple, it is very delicate and good, and the same instructions will serve for all the varieties of it which follow. The cook who desires to succeed with them, must take the trouble to regulate properly the heat of the oven in which they are baked. When it is necessary to place them in that of the kitchen-range the door should be left open for a time to cool it down (should it be very hot), before they are placed in it; and they may be set upon a plate or dish reversed, if the iron should still remain greatly heated.