Juliet Corson’s 1882 Recipe for ‘Racket Club Pudding’
“Butter slices of stale bread, enough to cover the bottom of a two-quart baking dish ; put a layer of raisins on the bread ; add another layer of bread, pour over it a custard made of four eggs beaten with four tablespoonfuls of sugar and a pint of milk ; pare, quarter, and core a quart of apples, lay them on the pudding, dust them with powdered sugar, and bake the pudding half an hour in a moderate oven. Serve it hot with powdered sugar, or jelly sauce.”
Juliet Corson, Meals for the Million 3rd edtn (1882)
Juliet Corson was, at the time of the publication of Meals for the Million, the Superintendent of the New York School of Cookery, and a dedicated advocate of “cheap and wholesome cookery” to help families on low incomes make the most wholesome and healthsome use of “the most ordinary materials” i.e. ingredients, that they possibly could.
Juliet’s “Racket Club Pudding” recipe is from the “simple desserts” section of the third edition of Meals For The Million. It’s a simple mix of apples, raisins, egg-based custard, sugar and stale bread. A fruity bread-and-butter pudding with no frills added, but rather delicious-sounding, if you ask me. Proper stick-to-your-ribs stuff.
Jelly sauce, you ask? That’s the next recipe in the book:
“Mix together one teaspoonful of corn starch or arrow root, one tablespoonful of jelly, four of sugar, and a pint of cold water; put the sauce over the fire and stir it until it boils one minute; then use it.”
I’m assuming we’re talking about “jelly” as in “smooth jam”, rather than a gelatinous, set jelly (U.K.) or “jell-o” (U.S.), and corn starch is usually called ‘cornflour’ here in the U.K., so this is a diluted and then re-thickened jam sauce… which actually sounds really good. I think I might try that, to go with Eliza Acton’s Essex Pudding, next time I make one of those.
How about you? Do you make your bread-and-butter pudding with custard, à la “Racket Club”? Or is custard a complete and utter heresy? Are you a bread-and-butter pudding purist instead: bread, butter, sugar, dried fruit, spices, no messing? And how do you like the sound of jelly sauce? Do please let me know, via the comments.
