A Trip through Britain with Puddings, late 1800’s through early 1900’s; #3 Exeter Pudding
#3 Exeter Pudding
Ingredients: – 16 tablespoons bread crumbs, 8 (?) oz sago, six oz suet, 4 oz sugar, a pinch of salt, ½ a lemon, rind grated, 2 or 3 well beaten eggs, 2 oz dissolved butter, a little milk, ½ doz. penny sponge cakes, a few wafers. Sauce – Melted red currant jelly
Mode: – Mix the breadcrumbs, sago, suet, sugar, salt, lemon-rind, eggs & butter adding a little milk if necessary. Have ready the sponge cakes & biscuits, Split the former in half & spread with raspberry jam. Butter a mould & lay a row of sponge – cakes at the bottom filling up the spaces with biscuits, then cover with a layer of the mixture, then more cakes & biscuits and (?) till the mould is full, keeping the mixture at the top. Cover with a buttered paper & either bake in a gentile oven or steam for 1 ½ hours serve with red currant sauce.
I gave a recipe for a small cake that could work very well as the wafer in this. Look at January 17th for “Dropped Sugar Cakes” from 1912 and in January 3rd and 13th for three recipes for a sponge cake, also from 1912.
https://kitchenrecipetreasures.com/2021/01/17/january-17th/
https://kitchenrecipetreasures.com/2021/01/14/january-13th/
https://kitchenrecipetreasures.com/2021/01/08/daily-recipes-by-calendar/
I do not know what a penny sponge cake is, but the one web site that gives an explanation says that it was what was sold in bakeries as a slice of cake. The Victoria Sponge cake was a very popular cake in this time period, a simple cake layered with jam and a cream, the topped with cream and whole strawberries
http://southtottenham.org/blog/tottenham-cake-recipe/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponge_cake
The wafers are most likely a hard sweet cookie (biscuits), I think they might be like vanilla wafers, the kind used in banana pudding.
https://www.foodtimeline.org/foodcookies.html
“Small cakes and delicate wafers were gradually added to the family of biscuits. In most English-speaking countries, the traditional definition of biscuit remains.”
“According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term “biscuit” debuted in the 14th century. Primary definition here:
“Biscuit: 1. a. A kind of crisp dry bread more or less hard, prepared generally in thin flat cakes. The essential ingredients are flour and water, or milk, without leaven; but confectionery and fancy biscuits are very variously composed and flavored. Even the characteristic of hardness implied in the name is lost in the sense ‘A kind of small, baked cake, usually fermented, made of flour, milk, etc.’ used, according to Webster, in U.S.”
The OED states “cookie” was introduced to the English language during the 18th century via the Dutch:
“Cookie: 1. a. In Scotland the usual name for a baker’s plain bun; in U.S. usually a small flat sweet cake (a biscuit in U.K.), but locally a name for small cakes of various form with or without sweetening. Also S. Afr. and Canada.”
Sago – This is a starch product made from the spongy center of several different tropical palm stems. It is often produced in the form of “pearls” that can be boiled in milk or water and sugar to make a sweet pudding. It can be used interchangeably with tapioca and cassava starch in some dishes.
It is nearly pure carbohydrate, and has been used as a food staple in Asia; there are records from the Song Dynasty, around 1225 where sago is a staple grain used in baking and other foods. It has long been used in the UK as a sweet milk pudding.
I really like unusual sounding recipes, especially those that have a sense of humor with them. These stuck out to me in this book from Highbridge, Somerset in the UK during 1898 through 1911. It is the first recipe in this book, “Old Lady Biscuits”, that just sets the whole thing as a fun read, with lots of interesting history and recipes.
Old Lady Biscuits recipe for sale in my ebay store
https://www.ebay.com/itm/254913192389?hash=item3b5a02a1c5:g:07wAAOSwFiZgWU6W
From this cookbook we get a trip around the United Kingdom through the pudding recipes. There are all kinds of them listed; 37 different puddings in this book; I will list the once a month so you can enjoy trying them one at a time. In England a “Pudding” is not always what we in the US would call a “Pudding”. Today if I say pudding, we think of things like the Jell-O pudding cups you can get in the store or the powdered stuff you can get in boxes. In Great Britain, it is often whatever is for dessert that day, in their media shows you will quite often hear someone asking “What is for Pudding today?” meaning what are they having for dessert.
But we also get the lovely and famous “Christmas Plumb Pudding”; that is only a small part in the family of “Puddings”. They go back into history, it would be difficult to pinpoint where they originally came from, the boiled pudding can be seen in all kinds of cook books going back to the Romans and all throughout the history of Great Britain and Europe.
Puddings can be sweet or savory and made from just about anything you can think of; meats, fruits, nuts, grains, spices and quite often they involve some sort of alcohol. Even the famous Scottish Traditional Dish of a Haggis, which is a blend of grains, oatmeal, organ meats and sometimes fruits, then cooked in the stomach of a sheep can be considered a “Pudding”.
All trough out the cookbooks I have from the 1800’s and the early 1900’s, there are pudding recipes of all kinds. I think they have become a forgotten food that today we consider an “Old-fashioned” something that Grandma made. Better left to the past, than try something that is actually a pretty good tasting food. Yes, they take a bit of preparation and cooking time, but we made one in the slow cooker last Christmas that was very easy, and we didn’t have to watch it the whole time it was boiling. It was very good and remarkably fun to make. You do not even have to use a pudding mold; (although I have a few of them as part of my collection of cooking utensils and tools) we used a simple glass bowl covered with foil and tied with a string to make a pudding in the crock pot. Online there are all kinds of instructions to use the crock pot as a tool in making them, just google “Crock pot Puddings” and they will come up.
There are several different handwriting types in this book, at least four of them. This book could have been handed down through several generations of a family, not many names are included and I will list them as they come up; I got it from someone in Highbridge, Somerset, this may not be where it originated so I cannot trace the names exactly to this area. There are only two dates that I have found in it; 1898 and 1911; so, it could date to the mid 1800’s and into the early 1900’s, there are two War cake recipes in it, which could put it into the 1940’s. The only full name in the book is Nancy Baines or Barnes.
There are no baking temperatures listed in these recipes; during this time, it was assumed you would know how to put together a recipe with out directions and what temperature to cook or bake them at. You gauged your oven temps through experience of working in the kitchen next to your mother and other relatives throughout your childhood and youth. You learned methods, techniques and timing so you never needed to have it written down in the cook books or diaries passed through each generation of the family.
Oven temperatures are seldom given in the old books and recipes; most times the only say something like a slow oven or quick oven. These are the equlivent to today’s oven temperatures;
A very slow oven equals 250 to 275 degrees.
A slow oven equals 300 to 325 degrees.
A moderate oven equals 350 to 375 degrees.
A hot or quick oven equals 375 to 400 degrees.
A very hot oven equals 400 to 450 degrees.
Suet is going to be a common ingredient in these puddings, there is a difference between suet and lard; best to not substitute one for the other. Breadcrumbs are also a common ingredient, the pudding was a common way to use up old dry or stale bread; the phrase “Waste not, want not” was taken very seriously, food was expensive and none was wasted if at all possible. During the years of the World Wars, one and two, again food was expensive and rationed; you used everything you had and made due without things you could not get; such as butter, meat, eggs, sugar and others.
Suet – It is the hard, raw fat from beef or mutton found around the kidneys and loins. The high smoke point and fast melting temperature makes it perfect for deep frying and pastry making. After rendering into tallow, it is used in cooking and baking such things as the traditional English Christmas pudding. The long process of rendering it down to tallow, involves melting and simmering several times, cooling it down all to refine the suet to a usable state. Suet requires refrigeration if it to be stored for any length of time.
Do not confuse suet with all fat from the animals it can only be found around the heart and kidneys of cattle and sheep. Nor should it be confused with drippings, which is the melted fats in the pan when cooking the meat.
Pre-packaged suet that can be found today in the markets is mixed with flour and dehydrated to make it stable at room temperature. Some care is needed to use this for the old recipes, the proportions of flour to fat will alter the stated recipe. Fresh suet can be bought in markets and must be coarsely grated to use; then must be refrigerated prior to use and used within a few days of buying it.
Lard – Is a semi-solid white fat from pigs used as a cooking fat or a shortening. It is prized for its properties of making pastries light and flaky, replacing butter in the recipes. The leaf lard is from the “flare” visceral fat surrounding the kidneys and inside the loin. With very little pork flavor it is perfect for use in baked goods; and since the early 1990 when trans-fats in partially hydrogenated vegetable oils became a concern for your health, it has had a resurgence of popularity as a “Natural” food.
As well as baked goods It has been used in culinary recipes for centuries, often for game meats to add fat in the cooking process to very low-fat meats such as venison; by “Larding” a roast you insert the lard into the meat so it doesn’t dry out during cooking.
Take a look at all the other recipes from this book.
Visit my ebay store to find some great kitchen utensils and collectables to go along with these vintage and antique recipes.
https://www.ebay.com/str/ozziesattic720?_trksid=p2047675.l2563
