Apple or peach pudding-pie or pie-pudding, no. 2, Yankee style

Amazing.

Recipe
Sweet milk, 1 cup
1 egg
Butter, 1 tablespoon, heaping
Baking powder,  1 teaspoon
Flour 1 cup or sufficient to make a rather thick batter (‘batter’ means like cake, better to handle with a spoon or easy to pour  out)
A little salt
Tart juicy apples to fill half an earthen pudding dish

Directions
Stir the baking powder into the sifted flour; melt the butter, beat the egg and stir all well together, having pared and sliced the apples or peaches, buttered the dish and laid in the fruit to only half fill it, dip the batter over the fruit to wholly cover it, as with a crust; the dish should not be quite full, lest as it rises it runs over in baking.

Bake in  moderate oven to a nice brown, to be done just ‘at the nick of time’ for dinner. Turn it bottom up upon a pie plate, and grate over nutmeg or sprinkle on some powdered cinnamon or other spices as preferred; then sprinkle freely nice white sugar and serve with sweet cream or rich milk, well sweetened. Peaches, pears, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, etc, in their season, work equally as well as apples.

by Mrs Sarah A Earley, Mt. Pleasant, Iowa.

Remarks [by Chase]
This plan avoids the soggy and indigestible bottom of a crust; and it matters not whether you call it a pie or a pudding. It eats equally well, even cold, with plenty of sugar and milk, having the cream stirred in.

From ‘A Guide to Wealth! Over One Hundred Valuable Recipes for Saloons, Inn-Keepers, Grocers, Druggists, Merchants and Families Generally’ (1858) by Dr Alvin Wood Chase, quoted in Buffalo Cake and Indian Pudding (Penguin Great Food, 2011)

Notes

• I used 2 Newton Wonder apples,
•  What happened to the milk, doctor? I added the egg to the flour first, then the milk with the butter melted into it. It went lumpy. I whisked it and the lumps vanished.
•  I used a pyrex pudding basin and despite my buttering it thoroughly, the bottom of the pudding (where there was less batter) stuck to it and had to be removed with a spoon in chunks.
•  After scraping the whole lot out onto a plate, I grated over some nutmeg, sprinkled on some cinnamon and about a dessertspoon of sugar.
• Regarding the name, I was reading  William Verrall’s Complete System of Cookery (1759) and it contains a recipe for Pudding Pie, which is a precursor to bread-and-butter pudding (basically the same but with no butter).

Results
Obviously, you might get a tidier result if you used less fruit or perhaps a shallower dish.

The baked batter mixture was a rarely seen shade of dark beige and had the creamy, buttery flavour of pastry but a smooth, springy texture, rather like firm Scotch pancake.

The apples had a good flavour  without any extra sweetener or spice (fresh Newton Wonders are equally good cooked or raw, though at this time of year, after a couple of months in storage, they‘re better cooked). I cut the it into big enough chunks to cook until soft, but keep their shape. I didn’t try it with cream and I think cream might smother the taste.

I can’t explain how I draw the line between something being undemanding but delicious or just boring, but this was on the right side. It  felt like the kind of food one might give a convalescent or a heart-broken friend, and as such, I have been eating it for breakfast.

Pudding’d by Elly

From The Baker’s ABC by John Kirkland, formerly Head Teacher of National School of Baking, published 1927 by Gresham

The author’s life was not unusual – she was a school teacher who moved from India to the UK in the 1930s to be with her husband (a doctor), however her involvement in the India League, her founding (with her husband) of several Hindu organisations as well as authoring three books means her work provides excellent insight into the Britain of this period, as well as her own experiences (more information here).

I chose this recipe as I love the components (of course!) but also because I wanted to minimise the amount of washing up – a starch and a vegetable in one pot, what could be better?

Alu and Methi  (or spinach)
1 ½lb potato (preferably small)
½lb methi [fenugreek] or spinach
1 tablespoon of set butter fat [directions for making ghee are given earlier in the book]
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon garam masala
1 small piece fresh ginger or medium sized onion
½ teaspoon chilli powder (optional)

For 4 people

Fry the finely-sliced ginger or onion slowly in the butter-fat for a few minutes. Add turmeric, salt, chilli powder and mix well. Add potatoes – which should be scraped not peeled and cut into halve and quarters if large – and allow to sizzle for a few minutes. Cover the frying pan and cook gently until the potatoes are slightly tender, which should take about fifteen minutes.

Well wash the methi or spinach, and cut quite small, (tender stalks should be included), drain and add this to the frying potatoes. Mix well and cook for another fifteen minutes without the lid. When the vegetables are tender and all the superfluous liquid has dried off, mix in the garam-masala.

Transfer the alu methi into a vegetable dish, cover it well and keep it in a low-heated oven until ready to serve.

Notes

• I used spinach, not fenugreek.
• I used onion, not ginger. I don’t know if I was using potatoes that were too large, but the onions started to overcook, long before the potatoes were ready, and at that point I heavily involved in the chicken curry I was making to go with it. I sloshed in  some water – about a quarter of a pint. I then carried on as the recipe specified.

Results

This tasted fresh and straightforward and was a good accompaniment to the chicken I made with it. Like so many vegetarian dishes, it was much improved after a day in the fridge. Due to the kind of potatoes used, this dish freezes well.

Alu’d by Elly

For every recipe we’ve cooked with castor sugar, click here.

From The Baker’s ABC by John Kirkland, formerly Head Teacher of National School of Baking, published 1927 by Gresham

I’m not going to go into how curry is not actually a dish and trade routes between England and India are hundreds of years old, because other people have done that already and better. (I found a fantastic concise history of all this on an old website, but then my virus software went berzerk, so you’ll have to make do with Wikipedia.)

Hannah Glasse was one of the first famous English ladies of domestic writing, pre-dating Eliza Acton by almost a  century (this is a cracking article about her).


Recipe
Take two small chickens and cut them as if for fricassee. Wash them clean and stew them in about a quarter of water for 5 minutes, then strain off the liquor and put the chicken in a clean dish; take three large onions and chop them small and fry them in about 2 ounces of butter and then put the chickens in and fry them until they are brown; take a quarter of an ounce of turmeric, a large spoonful of ginger and beaten pepper together, and a little salt to your palate, strew all these ingredients over the chickens while frying, then pour in the liquor and let it stew for about half an hour, then put in the quarter of a pint of cream and serve it up. The ginger, pepper and turmeric must be beat very fine.

From the The Art of Cookery made Plain and Simple (1747), quoted in Everlasting Syllabub and the Art of Carving, Penguin,  2011.

Notes

• I have mixed feelings about turmeric, to the extent that I didn’t own any and bought some for this recipe. I now realise that turmeric is like cumin, it should be used sparingly and goes stale quickly.
• I panicked over the phrase ‘cut for fricassee’, as I suddenly became convinced this had something to do with mincing. It doesn’t, it just means jointed, as I thought it meant the day before when I took two chicken thighs out of the freezer to make myself a reasonable sized portion of this.
• I have never poached meat before browning it, but it worked brilliantly, the sauce thickened quickly, until it looked exactly like… chicken in gravy.

Results
This is a really delicious dish with a warm, citrusy flavour. I thought it would be too bland without garlic or chilli, but I wrong. It wasn’t like any curry I’ve had before, and probably nothing like any dish served in India (I’ve never been). I’ve cooked simple dishes, like fruit soup and tasted them thinking ‘Yes, this is old, much much older than the publication date of the book’, but something about the date attached to this book made me think about the thousands of people over the last two centuries who have eaten this meal. To be sharing a physical experience (as opposed to an intellectual or emotional one from, say, listening to a piece of music), with so many people whose lives I can’t  imagine was briefly mind-blowing.

Curried by Elly

The introduction gives a flavour of the reading age and boredom threshold necessary to use this book:

Is that a raffia doily or a printed design on the plate? Can you buy raffia plate doilies or do I have to cut them out of the back of the hall chair myself? Love a dark green glass – it stops me being freaked out by the colour of my drink.

The manual contains a range of themes and menus for every occasion – formal and informal dinners, birthdays, religious holidays, Teen-age parties [sic], potlucks, open houses and picnics.

At first glance the recipes divide into two categories: tasty, and unthinkable. (Consider, triple-layer brownies -  a chocolate brownie on a flapjack base with chocolate icing, but also cheese bisque – a tin of cheese soup and a tin of celery soup heated together, garnished with popcorn.)

As I now keep cornmeal in the house since learning to make mamaliga last year, I decided to try these:

Notes
I made a half-portion and ended up with six muffins from a standard bun tray. I used three rashers of back bacon, as I thought this would probably be equivalent to six rashers of US bacon, which, according to my limited understanding, is what we call streaky bacon.

Results
Almost perfect little corn muffins – soft, light and full of bacon-y goodness.  I ate one straight of out the oven, gave two to my sister (she liked the texture but wasn’t sold on the flavour, possibly because I used juniper-cured bacon). I reheated the rest throughout the week for breakfast. They are rather crumbly and to my taste, far too salty, but apart from that this is a very quick and easy recipe. In future, I will leave out the salt completely, substitute honey for sugar (a tip learned from the giver – an excellent cornbread maker) and attempt to delight a range of guests with vegetarian ones, flavoured with cooked spring onions and parmesan. Just call me Carol van Sant (no, don’t).

Cornetted by Elly

The dough is generally mixed as a soft sponge the day before the rolls are to be made, and this sponge is tightened with flour and the necessary salt added in the morning. They are pinned out flat, washed with water and proved on boards thickly dusted, in a dry heat, then baked on the oven bottom. Sometimes they are dusted on top before baking. They have a pleasant flavour. Machines are now in use which mould, pin or roll these breakfast rolls or baps.

From The Baker’s ABC by John Kirkland, formerly Head Teacher of National School of Baking, published 1927 by Gresham

Anyway, I was very pleased when a friend gave me some Herman starter in a yoghurt pot, in a Liberty’s bag, along with the strict advice that it was Day 3, and a piece of paper stating:

Hello, my name is Herman.

I am a sourdough cake. I’m supposed to sit on your worktop for 10 days without a lid on.

You CANNOT put me in the fridge or I will die. If I stop bubbling, I am dead.

Day 1 You get Herman and put him in a large mixing bowl and cover loosely with a tea towel.

Day 2 Stir well

Day 3 Stir well

Day 4 Herman is hungry. Add 1 cup each of plain flour, sugar and milk. Stir well.

Day 5 Stir well

Day 6 Stir well

Day 7 Stir well

Day 8 Stir well

Day 9 Hungry again. Add the same as day 4 and stir well. Divide into 4 equal portions and give away to friends with a copy of these instructions. Keep the 4th one.

Day 10 Herman is very hungry. Stir well and add the following:

 1 cup sugar
half tsp (teaspoon) salt
2 cups plain flour
2/3 (two thirds) cup of cooking oil
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla essence
2 cooking apples cut into chunks
1 cup raisins
2 heaped tsp cinnamon
2 heaped tsp baking powder

 Mix everything together and put into a large greased baking tin. Sprinkle with a quarter of a cup of brown sugar and a quarter of a cup of melted butter. Bake for 45 minutes at 170-180C. When cold cut into finger pieces. Cake freezes well and is also delicious warm with cream or ice-cream.

Text from: http://srroberts.hubpages.com/hub/German-Friendship-Cake-Herman

If you want to make the starter yourself, you can find a recipe here and there are some excellent suggestions for alternatives to the apple and raisins here. (I remember my mother put cherries in it). Herman was recently been written about in the Guardian and mentioned on BBC Radio 4 on 1st January 2012, but not when I was awake to hear about it.

Notes
It must be said that if you have mastered the all-in-one sponge, Herman is going to seem like a lot of work in comparison. My kitchen has so little counter-space, that it sat on top of the bookcase in my sitting room and while I was out at work and my flat was unheated, I left last night’s hot water bottle resting against the bowl, which meant that for those ten days, I was envious of a bowl of dough, which, by the way, being raw bread dough, smelt like raw bread dough (which I don’t mind, but others may).

I was a little sceptical assembling the cake – there seemed to be an awful lot of oil, which first pooled in the mixture and then gave it a greasy look. The whole mass was quite hard to stir, although one doesn’t have to worry about beating the air out of the batter as one would with a regular sponge. It ended up rather stiff, so I added a splash of rum. (This is my answer to improving almost everything pudding-related.) I would recommend cooking at a lower temperature, so that the top doesn’t burn before the bottom has set.

Results
The texture was light and soft, the mid-point between a cake and an open-crumbed loaf of bread. The flavour was similarly mixed – vanilla and cinnamon, but also with a slight, pleasant undertone of brown toast. The great thing about the fairly large amount of oil, is that slices of this cake do indeed freeze very well, not noticeably changing in flavour or texture after thawing and re-heating. In fact at the rate I’m eating it, Herman will keep me in cake for 6 weeks, and how many Victoria sandwiches can say that?

Have you been offered some Herman starter? Did you accept or decline? What did you add to the batter and how did it turn out? Did you give away all 3 portions or did you keep a batch and are now a champion Herman maker?

Stirred by Elly

Here is the recipe:

and here is the recipe for the French Batter:

And here are some miscellaneous images:

ETA: Here is the Trex we used:

Are you making ‘proper’ eggy custard or just Bird’s outa the
packet?  Only two things to remember – eggy, don’t boil or it’ll curdle;
powder, boil or it’ll not thicken well (both – stir like mad!).

I decided to use the most reliable cookbook I own, The Reader’s Digest Cookery Year (1976).  I separated 4 eggs, went to Crouch End to buy vanilla pods (while wondering how I had become that sort of person) and was assured by the hostess that she had adequate milk and sugar.

The measuring jug wasn’t clean by the time I started making the custard so I guess a pint, I used half a vanilla pod, having bought some huge ones. It was also discovered that there was only demerara sugar in the house. I probably didn’t leave the vanilla to infuse in the milk for long enough – it was probably ten minutes, but it was also after 9pm on Christmas day, so things were a bit… blurry.

At one stage, lumps started to form and I asked for the ancient tin of custard powder left behind by an earlier tenant (every houseshare has one) to be located (it was behind the bread bin), but after switching from spoon to whisk,  the harder I worked, the custardier it became.

Results
The final custard was milder, paler and foamier (almost fluffy) than custards I have had in the past  made with cornflour. It probably would have benefited from a scrape of nutmeg and slightly longer to infuse with vanilla, but other than that I was pleased with it and it was well received by the rest of the party.

Sauced by Elly