Esther Copley’s 1827 Recipe for ‘Baked Apple or Gooseberry Pudding’
“Make a light batter ; that is, in the proportion of three eggs and an equal measure of milk, to two spoonfuls of flour. Butter a deep dish, sufficiently large, and pour in half the batter ; then add three half pints or a quart of fine ripe gooseberries, nicely picked, or four good-sized apples cut up, scatter over a little moist sugar, powdered ginger, and nutmeg ; then pour the remainder of the batter, and bake in a tolerably quick oven.
N.B. Be careful not to put too much sugar. as it is apt to make the batter heavy ; this remark applies to all puddings in which batter and fruit are combined.”
Esther Copley, The New London Cookery and Complete Domestic Guide (1827)
Gooseberry season has arrived, and so I’m returning to my quest for historical recipes that make use of this most underrated of fruits. So far, I’ve posted a gooseberry fool from 1662, a gooseberry tansey from 1729, another gooseberry fool from 1838, and a 1915 recipe for gooseberry cream without cream.
This time we’re stepping away from the cream-based end of the spectrum towards something a bit more stick-to-your-ribs. The author of the recipe above is Esther Copley, – also the author of the second of those gooseberry fool recipes – who was a prolific writer of pamphlets on domestic economy, and other topics, mainly for the Religious Tracts Society.
Esther’s gooseberry pudding recipe rather reminds me of William Kitchiner’s 1832 recipe for ‘Nottingham Pudding’, an apple-based version of toad-in-the-hole. Following her instructions should result in a fruited batter pudding, glazed with spiced sugar. The fact that we’re instructed to add half the batter, then the fruit, then the other half of the batter, suggests to me that the batter mixture should be quite thick, which I guess will help to prevent the fruit from sinking to the bottom of the pudding dish as it cooks? I’m not much of a pudding-maker myself, but I understand that’s a Thing That Can Happen, yes?
Anyhow, it does sound rather tasty to me. But what do you reckon? Do let me know if this sounds like your sort of pud, via the comments.
