Wednesday, July 31, 2024

A Potatoe Pudding (1797)

The Accomplished Housekeeper, and Universal Cook: Containing All the Various Branches of Cookery; Directions for Roasting, Boiling and Made Dishes, Also for Frying, Broiling, Stewing, Mincing, and Hashing. The Different Methods of Dressing Poultry, Game, and Fish ... Directions for Carving. With a Catalogue of the Various Articles in Season Every Month in the Year (1797) 


A potatoe pudding

Having boiled a quarter of a pound of potatoes till they are soft, peel them, and mash them with the back of a spoon, and rub them through a sieve to have them fine and smooth. Then take half a pound of butter melted, half a pound of fine sugar, and beat them well together till they are smooth. Stir six eggs, well beaten, into a glass or sack or brandy: and if you think proper, you may put in half a pint of currants. Boil it half an hour. Pour over it melted butter, with a glass of wine in it, and sweeten it with sugar. 


Verdict: If you are thinking to yourself, “Self, is that not a ludicrous amount of butter?”, you are wise indeed. This thing is pretty much melted butter, with eggs and some potato starch trying to hold it together. Sadly, all of the structural support those ingredients lent were insufficient to hold in all the melted butter. Yes, I did not dump more melted butter over the top. That pool of butter is just what could not be contained by the pudding itself.


 I used sour cherry juice in place of the wine, as I am a teetotaler. I thought that would give it a nice color, but instead it immediately turned the batter Prison Wall Grey.  The taste wasn’t terrible (I mean, with that much butter, I’d probably eat straw).  It is kind of mousse-ish?  Everyone grudgingly ate one bite, after verifying it was not cat food.  To fix this, I’d probably quadruple the potato, quarter the butter, and use some liquid that doesn’t turn grey. 


I put it in the fridge so I could peel off the hardened butter and use it for cooking, but in the end, it was so unpleasant to look at I slid it into the trash. I say “slid,” but the butter had sealed the pudding and the plate together, so I had to use a cottage cheese lid to get it off.  

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