[1952]

"1 Pkgs of New Royal Instant Pudding Free...It's Homogenized...For richer flavor! Creamiers Texture! Easy Digestion! At Your Gorcers' now. New homogenized Royal Instant Pudding makes your favorite desserts turn out better than ever before. New Royal Instant Pudding is completely different! It makes quicker, more-delicious-than-ever fruit and nut puddings, pies, ice creams, parfaits, refrigerator cakes, beverages, sauces, cake frostings and fillings! Try wonderful new Royal Instant Pudding today--before your grocer's sale ends...3 wonderful flavors! Chocolate. Vanilla. Butterscotch." ---display ad, Los Angeles Times, , May 15, 1952 (p. B5)

"A new instant pudding dessert, recently announced by the maker of a line of excellent packaged desserts is real hand. Arriving in our market just in time for summer weather, this food product is one to lighten your cooking routine. Perhaps you've tried it. If not, listen to the easy directions: Open the box, empty into 2 cups of cold milk and beat 1 minute. It's that easy! The flavor list reads vanilla, chocolate and butterscotch. Texture is light and creamy; taste is rich and fresh. It's good when prepared by the directions and has unlimited variety dressed up in other ways."

---"Instant Pudding Makes Instant Hit," Marian Manners, Los Angeles Times, June 25, 1952 (p. B4)

Blancmange

This Medieval invalid food, Lenten dish & everyday pottage alternative featured prominently in early European cookbooks. AKA blewmanger, blancmanger, White Dish.

What was blancmange?

"The blancmange (meaning 'white food') was one of the most popular dishes everywhere in Europe from the Middle Ages through the mid-seventeenth century. Originally it would have been made with almond milk and was specifically designed to be a light food appropirate for invalids. Nearly every cookbook written in these several hundred years includes a recipe, and some offer multiple variations. it could also be baked in a pie, colored with saffron, or cooked until fairly solid and sliced. The final texture should be like a very stiff pudding, although a sweet chicken pudding scented with roses sounds a little strange today, the final taste is surprisingly pleasant. Today the term blancmange refers to a sweet almond and milk pudding thickened with gelatin."

---Cooking in Europe 1250-1650, Ken Alabala [Greenwood Press:Westport CT] 2006 (p. 111)

"Blancmange has not always been the pale wobbling thing which until recently lurked behind jellies on Britain's tea tables. When the word first entered the English language, in the fourteenth century, it was used for a savoury dish. As its name inmplies (French blanc, white', manger, eat'--the final 'r' did not dissapear until the nineteenth century) it was made from pale ingredients. Almonds, in some form or another--ground, fried, or as almond milk--were included, as was rice, either whole or as rice flour; these formed the basis of a thick gruel or pottage, to which was added chicken meat...The transformation of the chicken dish of the Middle Ages to the modern confection was a gradual one. Often the chicken was omitted, and a gelling agent added. By the eighteenth century it had become a sort of almond jelly, made with milk or cream. In the nineteenth century arrowroot was introduced into the recipe as a thickener, with flavourings such as lemon peel and cinnamon making it an appropriate dessert dish. This paved the way for the modern commercial cornflour-based version, which...remained a mainstay among British puddings until the 1960s, when instant pre-prepared desserts started its demise."

---An A to Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 32-3)

"Blancmange...The ancestor of the homely modern [pudding-like] dish was honoured on medieval and Renaissance menus all over W. Eruope. The 14th- and 15th-century English blancmangers were made of shredded chicken breast, sugar, rice, and wither ground almonds or almond milk, but there were many variations on the idea on the Continent; furthermore, there was a whole family of related dishes...It has long been speculated that it derives from the Middle East, whence both rice and almondsd were imported. One of the most widespread dishes in medieval Arab cuisine is isfdhabaj (a Persian name which also means white food'), and the recipes translated by Arberry (1939) is lamb stewed with almond milk. However, Perry (1989) points out that this happens to be the only isfidhabaj recipe in Arab culinary literature containing almond milk; the others show little or no resesmblance to the European dish. It seems likely that blancmanger does reflect eastern influence, but the exact source and path are obscure...Although modern people are always surprised to learn of a sweet made from chicken breast, this was common in medieval Arab cuisine, where chicken was sometimes literally candied. The concept survives in the contemporary Turkish rice and chicken dessert Tavuk gogsu kazandibi, whether this is an idea picked up from the Arab sources or conceivably a version of blancmanger."

---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 80)

"While the ordinary people of [Medieval] lowland Britain ate their pease pottage...the nobility and gentry enjoyed some of the rich spicy meat and fish pottages introduced from Norman France. The great Anglo-Norman pottages--'civey', gravey', charlet', buckkenade', mortrews', blancmange' and others--took their character not from the meat of fish they contained, but from the sauce in which those ingredents were cooked...'Blancmange' was another standing pottage, chiefly notable for the absence of strong spices in its composition. The ingredients were capon [chicken] flesh, teased small with a pin, whole boiled rice, alsmond milk and plenty of sugar. It was decorated with a surface scattering of red and white aniseed comfits or blanced almonds. At a feast, blancmange was sometimes departed' or divided into two parts, one of which was coloured red or yellow as a contrast to the other which was left white; or it was departed with a different pottage, such as the yellow caudel ferry'. Needlesss to say mortrews of fish' and blancmange of fish' were eaten on fasting days...perch or lobster or dried haddock for the fish day blancmange."

---Food and Drink in Britain From the Stone Age to the 19th Century, C. Anne Wilson [Academy Chicago:Chicago] 1991 (p. 206-8)

"Prominent among the festal foods of medieval times had been the pottages made from meat with sweet dried fruits, almonds, sugar and spices. Of the thick ones blancmange was the principal survivor; and like its predecessor, based usually upon teased or carded capon meat, and ground almonds were still a frequent flavouring, thought htey were often supplemented and sometimessupplanted by rosewater. And when it is thick as pap', said a contemporary recipe, take it form the fire, and put it in a fair platter, and when it is cold, lay three slices on a dish, and cast a little sugar on it, and so serve it in.' But an alternative version now existed as well, a meatless blancmange made with cream, sugar and rosewater, thickened with egg yolks or with beaten egg whites. Blancmange, which had been a first course dish in medieval times, now tended to appear in the second course, sometimes offered along with leach. During the seventeenth century both capon flesh and meatless types coexisted, the latter now sometimes thickened with wheat or flour; and Robert May still offered recipes for fish blancmange too. Then, late in the century, a new concept of the dish arrived from France. It began with a hen, but this hen was boiled with calves' feet, and the resultant jelly was thickened with ground almonds, flavoured with rosewater and allowed to set. In another recipe the hen was omitted altogether, and the hartshorn jelly made, which was strained with ground almonds and milk. Such blancmange closely resembled white leach. It also foreshadowed the Englsih blancmange of the eighteenth century, which was always a kind of jelly, stiffened with isinglass or hartshorn, coloured with milk, cream or beaten egg whites, but still flavoured with the almonds which had so long been associated with the confection of that name. The final transformation came from the new world. In the West Indies, as in the East Indies, arrowroot was cultivated as a source of starch. Perhaps the early settlers recognized its potential as a thickener for meatless blancmange. By the early 1820s recipes were published there for American or West Indian blancmange. Boiling milk, sweetened and seasoned with a little cinnamon and lemon peel, was poured upon a solution of arrowroot and stirred briskly the while, since it thickened instantly. It was put into a mould and turned out the next day. Here at last was the true precursor or the modern cornflour blancmange."

---ibid (p. 225-6)



[14th century England]

Blawmanger; (includes modernized version) [14th century Spanish Catalonia]

"White Dish

Make a good chicken broth. Then take uncooked chicken breasts, all that are needed, and press them a little in a mortar, without breaking them. Then take them from the mortar and hit them with your hands on a plate. Then take almond milk made with the broth, that has thickened adequately, and put it to cook in a good, varnished pot. Stir it well, and keep it from the smoke. Put in a little well-ground rice flour, and white sugar, and cook its slowly, just until it boils. When it has thickened, take it from the fire and put it on the coals. Cover it with a clay lid, and keep it covered a while. Then stir it a little and cover it again, and be sure that there is no fire burning on the sides of the pot. Then flavor it with salt. This dish should be al little browned. one knows when it is cooked when one puts it in his mouth: the white is all tender and it has a sharp taste that is not present in cold water. This dish can be made with partridge and other chicken. Also, you can make it in another way, which can be made of almonds: grind the chicken breasts so no large pieces show, and put them to cook with ground rice flour. But, however, the first way described above is better, as long as you know to leave it on the coals long enough to have take on color and a good, sharp flavor by itself. Also, one should put in a ground substance; one chicken breast for a bow of white dish. For the sugar, milk, and rice flour, as it seems best to you. you can put in half a bowl of ground rice per ten chicken breasts." ---The Book of Sent Sovi: Medieval Recipes from Catalaonia, edited by Joan Santanach, translated by Robin Vogelzang [Barcino Tamesis:Barcelona Spain] 2008 (p. 191)

[NOTE: Original Catalan text appears on p. 190) [15th century Rome]

"First: How to Make Blancmange Over Capon

To make twelve servings: take two librae of almonds and crush well. In order that they may be whites as possible, soak in cool water for a day and a night. Then crush them, and when they have been crushed, add a little cool water so that they do not purge their oil. Then take a capon breast and crust together with the almonds; and takes some bread white and soak it in leave capon broth; and crust with the other ingredients; and take a little verjuice, a half ounce of ginger, well peeled so that it is all white, and a half libra or more of sugar; and thin with some lean capon broth; and pass through a stamine into a well-cleaned pot; and place the pot over hot coals away from the flame, stirring often with a spoon; and let it cook for a half hour; and when it is done cooking, add three ounces of good rose water. Then serve in bowls or cover the entire capon, or whatever fowl it may be, with the blancmange, and serve. if you cover the capon with the blancmange, to make it even more beautiful, top generously with pieces of apple. If you with to give this dish two colors, take an egg yolk and some saffron, and mix together with a part of the dish, and make sure that it is more sour with verjuice than the white version. When prepared in this way, the dish is said to be 'broomish.' If you have two capons, dress one white and the other yellow." (p. 62) "How to make Twelve Servings of Blancmange in the Catalan Style

Take two jugs of goat's milk and eight ounces of extra fine rice flour and boil the rice flour in the milk. Then take the half-cooked breast of a capon that was butchered the same day and rip into strings as thin as hair and place in a mortar and give them no more than two turns of the pestle. Then, when the milk has simmered for a half hour, add the breast to the milk together with a libra of sugar; and let it boil for about a quarter of an hour more; and you must stir continuously, from the beginning to the end. You can tell that it is done when you remove the spoon and you see that the blancmange is syrupy. Then add some rose water, as above; and serve in bowls with a bit of sugar." (p. 62) "Lenten Blancmange

To make ten servings: take a libra and a half of peeled almonds and crush well, as above, and take some bread white that has been soaked in white pea broth. If you do not have any peas, substitute with another broth by boiling very white bread in water for half an hour and then soak the above-mentioned bread white in this broth. Then take some good saltwater fish or some good freshwater pike that has been boiled. Take a half libra of its most firm and white meat and crush well with the almonds and bread white, a little broth, a half libra of peeled ginger, eight ounces of sugar, and some orange juice, which, if unavailable, can be substituted by a little verjuice to which rose water has been added. Incorporate and pass through a stamine; cook in a pot for an eighth of an your, away from the flame so that it does not burn; and stir continuously with a spoon." (p. 73) "Blancmange in the Catalan Style

To make ten servings, take a libra of well-peeled and well-crushed almonds which you have thinned with fatty pullet broth, or another type of broth, and pass through a stamine; boil in a well-cleaned cooking pot, adding two ounces of rice flour that has been thinned with almond milk and strained; and simmer for an hour, blending and stirring with a spoon all the whole, adding a half libra [of sugar and] capon breast that has been cooked in the almond milk in the beginning and then finely chopped and well crushed. When the whole mixture is done, add a little rose water; serve in bowls, topped with sweet spices." (p. 75) "How to Make Ten Servings of a Pottage That Resembles Blancmange

Take a libra of peeled and well-crushed almonds; thin with fatty pullet broth or other good broth, and pass through a stamine into a pot to boil with an ounce of rice flour thinned with almonds milk; allow it to boil for an hour, stirring all the while and adding a half libra of sugar and a bit of finely chopped and crushed capon that was cooked first in milk; when all this mixture is cooked, add a little rose water; serve in bowls, topped with sweet spices." (p. 122) ---The Art of Cooking: The First Modern Cookery Book, Maestro Martino of Como, edited and with an introduction by Luigi Ballerini, translated and annotated by Jeremy Parzen, with fifty modernized recipes by Stefania Barzini [University of California Press:Berkeley CA] 2005

[NOTES: (1) This book offers modernized recipes for "How to Make Balncmange Over Capon" (p. 149) and "Blancmange in the Catalan Style" (p. 81). (2) A stamine is 'a woolen or worsted cloth used as a sieve, a fundamental tool in medieval and Renaissance cookery." (p. 51) (3) A libra "was equivalent to twelve ounces...a pound in the troy system, as opposed to the avoirdupois system, in which a pound is equivalent to sixteen ounces.' (p. 51).] [1545 London]

To Make Bleaw manger (with chicken)

[1595 London]

"To make blewmanger

Take to a pint of cream, twelve or thirteen yolks of eggs, and strain them into it. And seethe them well, ever stirring it with a stick that is broad at the end. But before you seethe it put in sugar and in the seething taste of it, that you may, if need be, put in more sugar. And when it is almost sodden put in a little rose water that it may taste thereof. Seethe it well till it be thick, and then strain it again if it hath need, or else put it into a fair dish and stir it till it be almost cold. Take the white of all the eggs and strain them with a pint of cream and seethe that with sugar, and in the end put in rose water as into the other, and seethe till it be thick enough. Then use it as the other. When you serve it you may served one dish, and another of the other in rolls, and cast on biscuits."

---The Good Housewife's Jewel, Thomas Dawson, reprint 1595 edition with and introduction by Maggie Black [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1996 (p. 85-6)

[NOTES: (1) According to the glossary in this book, the word "seethe" means a reasonably fast boil. (2) Recipe titled "To make a blanch manger on the fifth day" appears on p. 89.] [1604 London]

"To Make Blancmange.

Leige, Modern-day Belgium, 1604 (Lancelot de Casteau, 32)

...Take a capon or chicken which has been dead two or three days, and cook it, being cooked remove the breast meat and cut it into little pieces, and pound it in mortar, adding two or three spoons of cow's milk. The take seven pound six ounces of cow's milk, a pound of rice flour which is very fine, and mix well your flour with the capon meat, and mix all the milk aforementioned with it. Then take a pound and a half of sugar, which is very white, place it in a cauldron on the fire and stir it well constantly with a wooden spoon, being boiled a quarter of an hour, place it eight ounces of rose water, a little salt, and let it boil again a little quarter hour, then remove from the fire and put in plates or in cups, or in square forms."

---Cooking in Europe 1250-1650, Ken Alabala [Greenwood Press:Westport CT] 2006 (p. 111)

Compare with Cold Shape & Frumenty.

Bread pudding

The history of bread dates back to prehistoric times; pudding (both sweet and savory) was first enjoyed by ancient peoples. Food historians generally attribute the origin of basic bread pudding to frugal cooks who did not want to waste stale bread. Since very early times it was common practice to use stale/hard bread in many different ways...including edible serving containers (Medieval sops, foccacia), stuffings (forcemeat), special dishes (French toast) and thickeners (puddings). In the 19th century recipes for bread pudding were often included in cookbooks under the heading "Invalid cookery." Recipes vary greatly and are often influenced by the type of bread employed. "Bread puddings. An importrant category. Many desserts include bread whether in the form of breadcrumbs or slices of bread...It is safe to assume that from the very distant past cooks have sometimes turned stale bread intoa sweet pudding, if only by soaking it in milk, sweetening it by one means or another, and baking the result. The addition of some fat, preferably in the form of butter, and something like currantsis all that is needed to move this frugal dish into the category of treats, and this is what has ensured its survival in the repertoire, even on cooks who never have stale bread on their hands. This enhanced product is known as bread and butter pudding and this same dish can also be made with something more exotic than plain bread, for example, brioche, pannetone, slices of plain cake, etc. and can be enlivened by judicious spicing or by reinforcing the currants with plumper sultanas and mixed peel. But such elaborations must be kept under strict control, so that what is essentially a simple pudding does not lose its character under the weight of sophisticated additions. The likely history of the pudding can be illuminated by looking back at medieval sops and at the medieval practice of using a hollowed-out loaf as the container for a sweet dish...variants of bread pudding could be eaten hot as pudding or cold as a cake...an Egyptian dessert which bears a marked similarity to bread and butter pudding, and which was originally a simple dish or rural areas...is called Om Ali and is made with bread...milk or cream, raisins, and almonds...Another Middle Eastern bread sweet, Eish es serny (palace bread), is mad by drying large round slices cut horizontally through a big loaf to make enormous rusks, which are then simmered in sugar and honey syrup flavoured with rosewater and coloured with caramel. Traveling further east, an Indian dessert in the Moghul style, Shahi tukra, is made with bread fried in ghee, dipped in a syrup flavoured with saffron and rosewater, and covered with a creamy sauce in which decorative slices of almond are embedded.""

---The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 103) Bread pudding & the Civil War

Our survey of Civil War food history books and primary sources indicates bread pudding was popular on both sides of the Mason Dixon Line. Civil war soldiers sometimes subsitituted crackers for bread. Sweeteners were hard to come by, especially for Confederate soldiers. Still? They made do. Notes here: "Desserts existed almost solely in the imagination, especially with the scarcity of sugar. "If we wanted something extra, we pounded our crackers into fine pieces, mixed it up with sugar, raisons and water, and boiled it in our tin cups,"..."This we called pudding." Some Yankees bought meal at a local meal and made flapjacks and puddings in what Fisk said was "a style of simplicity such as only soldiers would think of adopting." For Confederates, a final "course" could be even less appetizing. Fruit and berries were ocften baked into pies that for want of sugar and proper flour, could be fearsome to the taste and digestion. Some Kentucky Confederates made a sugarless fried pie, "this having all the tough elasticity of a rubber suspender." Once in a while, when there was a little sugar, soldiers with Lee made blackberry pies. Often the only sweetener available was watermelon juice, not easy to obtain when by 1863 a single watermelon sold for $40.00 in the camps."

---A Taste for War: The Culinary History of the Blue and the Gray, William C. Davis [Stackpole Books:Mechanisburg PA] 2003 (p. 26) A SAMPLER OF BREAD PUDDING RECIPES THROUGH TIME

[1747]

"A bread pudding

Cut off all the crust of a Penny white loaf and slice it thin into a quart of new milk, set it over a chafingdish of coals, till the bread has soaked up all the milk, then put in a piece of sweet butter, stir it round, let it stand till cold, or you may boil your milk, and pour over your bread, and cover it up close, does full as well; then take the Yolks of six eggs, the whites of three, and beat them up, with a little rosewater, and nutmeg, a little salt, and sugar, and if you choose it, mix all well together, and boil it half an hour."

---The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy, Hannah Glasse [1747] p. 109 [1824]

"Bread pudding

Grate the crumb of a stale loaf, and pour it in a pint of boiling milk, let it stand an hour, then beat it to a pulp; add six eggs, well beaten, half a pound of butter, the same of powdered sugar, half a nutmeg, a glass of brandy, and some grated lemon-peel; put a paste in the dish and bake it."

---The Virginia Houswife, Mary Randolph, facsimile 1824 edition with historical notes and commentaries by Karen Hess [University of South Carolina Press:Columbia] 1984 (p. 150) [1845]

"Rich Bread and Butter Pudding

Give a good flavour of lemon-rind and bitter almonds, or of cinnamon, ir preferred to a pinto of new milk, and when it has simmered a sufficient time for this, strain and mix it with a quarter of a pint of rich cream; sweeten it with four ounces of sugar in lumps, and stir it while still hot to five well-beaten eggs; throw in a few grains of salt, and move the mixture briskly with a spoon as a glass of brandy is added to it. Have ready a thickly-buttered dish three layers of think bread and butter cut from a half-quartern loaf, with four ounces of currants, and one and a half of finely shred candied peel, strewed between and over them; pour the eggs and milk on them by degrees, letting the bread absorb one portion before another is added; it should soak for a couple of hours before the pudding is taken to the oven, which should be a moderate one. Half an hour will bake it. It is very good when made with new milk only; and some persons use no more than a pint of liquid in all, but part of the whites of the eggs my then be omitted. Cream my be substituted for the entire quantity of milk at pleasure.

New milk, 1 pint; rind of small lemon, and 6 bitter almonds bruised (or 1/2 drachm of cinnamon); simmered 10 to 20 minutes. Cream, 1/4 pint; sugar, 4 oz.; eggs, 6; brandy, 1 wineglassful. Bread and butter, 3 layers; currants, 4 oz.; candied orange or lemon-rind, 1 « oz.; to stand 2 hours, and to be baked 30 minutes in a moderate oven."

---Modern Cookery for Private Families, Eliza Acton, 1845 facsimile reprint with an introduction by Elizabeth Ray [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1993 (p. 359) [1847]

"Poor Man's Bread Pudding

Pour boiling water over half a loaf of stale bread, and covering it up closely, let it remain until thoroughly soaked; then squeeze it in a towel until half the water is out; put it in a bowl, and wweeten with brown sugar to the taste; add, while hot, a large tablespoonful of butter; flavor with grated nutmeg, a spoonful of brandy, ditto of rose-water; add some stoned raisins. It should be put in a well buttered baking dish about an inch deep, and should bake four hours in a slow oven."

---The Carolina Housewife, Sarah Rutledge, facsimile reprint of 1847 edition [University of South Carolina Press:Columbia] 1979(p. 126) [1849]

"A Baked Bread Pudding

Take a stale five cent loaf of bread; cut off all the curst, and grate or rub the crumb as fine as possible. Boil a quart of rich milk, and pour it hot over the bread; then stir in a quarter of a pound of butter, and the same quantity of sugar, a glass of wine and brandy mixed, or a glass of rose water. Or you may omit the liquor and substitute the grated peel of a large lemon. Add a tablespoonful of mixed cinnamon and nutmeg powdered. Stir the whole very well, cover it, and set it away for half an hour. Then let it cool. Beat seven or eight eggs very light, and stir them gradually into the mixture after it is cold. Then butter a deep dish, and bake the pudding an hour. Send it to the table cool."

---Directions for Cookery in its Various Branches, Miss Leslie [1849] (p.299) [1884]

"Bread pudding (includes French bread pudding) from Mrs. D.A. Lincoln [1918]

Bread pudding from Fannie Merritt Farmer [1936]

"Bread pudding

No. 1. 1 qt. stale bread or cake in cubes

1 pt. Milk

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/4 cup seeded raisins

Beat the whole eggs, add milk, sugar, and gratings of nutmeg or cinnamon if desired; pour over the bread in a pudding dish, let stand until thoroughly soaked and bake 20 minutes in a moderate oven. Add seeded raisins and almonds if desired. Serve with milk, jelly or any pudding sauce..."

---The Settlement Cook Book, Mrs. Simon Kander [Settlement Cook Book Co.:Milwaukee] Twenty-first Edition Enlarged and Revised 1936 (p. 341) You can examine several more 19th century American bread pudding recipes courtesy of the digital cookbook collection uploaded by Michigan State University. Search recipe name: bread pudding

Need more? Ask your librarian to help you find this article: "It's puddying time!" Country Living, April 1991, p. 132

---this piece traces the history of bread pudding and its symbolism in colonial America.

Related foods? French toast& batter puddings.

Rice pudding

The history of rice is a long and complicated story. Food historians generally agree that rice came to Europe by way of India. At first, rice was not used as an ingredient in cooking. It was prized for its medicinal value and known as a thickening agent. The history of spices also figures prominently in the history of this dish.

Rice pudding around the world Middle East

"Firni, a sweet milky dessert, to be eaten cold, made either with cornflour or rice flour or sometimes both and usually flavoured with rosewater and/or ground cardamom. The dish is decorated with chopped or ground almonds or pistachio nuts...the history of firni goes back a very long way; it seems to have originated in ancient Persia or the Middle East; and to have been introduced to India by the Moghuls."

---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 300) "Shola...the name given to a number of dishes all over the Middle East, Iran, and Afghanistan in which short-grain rice is cooked until soft and thick, wtih other ingredients chose according to whether the shola is be be savoury or sweet...sholleh was brought to Perisa by the Mongolians in the 13th century...Shola-e-zard is a sweet saffron and rosewater (or orange flower water) flavoured rice dish...It has a religious significance, being made on the 10th day or Muharram (the Muslim month of mourning)...also made as a nazr, which is a custom of thanksgiving or pledge practiced in Iran and Afghanistan. The shola is cooked and then distributed to the poor and to neighbours and relatives."

---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 720) Asia

"Kheer is the Indian name for sweet milk puddings usually made with rice, although it can also be made with fine noodles called seviyan, or semolina, carrots or sage. It is sometimes called sheer, which means milk in Persian. It probably originated in Persia where a similar dessert is known as sheer birinj (rice pudding). There are many variations in the flavourings which can include raisins, cardamom, cinnamon, almond, pistachio, saffron, kewra essence...or rosewater, etc. For special occasions it is customary to decorate the chilled kheer with edible silver or gold leaf. The Persian version, sheer birinj, according to Kekmat...was originally the food of angels, first made in heaven when the Prophet Muhammad ascended to the 7th floor of Heaven to meet God and he was served this dish."

---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 431) "Kheer. A sweet confection based on rice. When prepared as a ritual pucca' food, the rice is first lightly fried in ghee before boiling with sugared milk till the milk thickens. A kheer of jowar is mentioned in the fourteenth century padmavat of Gugarat, and other cereal products (vermicelli, cev, pheni) may be used as well. A thinner product is payasam, and both are popular desserts, routinely as well as on festive occasions. The Hindi word kheer derives from the Sanskrit ksheer for milk and kshirika for any dish prepared with milk."

---A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food, K. T. Achaya [Oxford University Press:Delhi] 1998 (p. 130) "The Chinese eight jewel rice pudding is so named because it is made with eight different kinds of fruit preserved with honey. Eight was said by Confucius to be the number of perfection. The fruits are arranged on the bottom of the dish and cooked, sweetened glutinous rice poured on top. The pudding is then steamed for several hours so that the rice breaks down into a homogenous mass."

---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 665) Europe

"Rice pudding is the descendant of earlier rice pottages, which date back to the time of the Romans, who however used such a dish only as a medicine to settle upset stomaches. There were medieval rice pottages made of rice boiled until soft, then mixed with almond milk or cow's milk, or both, sweetened, and sometimes coloured. Rice was an expensive import, and these were luxury Lenten dishes for the rich. Recipes for baked rice puddings began to appear in the early 17th century. Often they were rather complicated...Nutmeg survives in modern recipes. It is now unusual to add eggs or fat, and rice pudding has tended to become a severely plain nursery dish. Nevertheless, it has its devotees."

---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 665) "Northern Italians fancy themselves as having a monopoly on the consumption of rice, but in fact rice first entered Europe as a foodstuff via Arab-occupied Spain and Sicily. The Romans knew rice only as an extremely expensive commodity imported in small quantities from India for medicinal purposes."

--- Pomp and Sustenance: Twenty-Five Centuries of Sicilian Food, Mary Taylor Simeti [ECCO Press:Hopewell NJ] 1998 (p. 69) RECIPES

Recipe for early Roman rice pudding: "Oriza

Rice is boiled in fresh water. When it is properly cooked, the water is drained off and goat's milk is added. The pot is put on the flame and cooked slowly until it becomes a solid mass. It is eaten like this hot, not cold, but without any salt or oil--Anthimus On the Observance of Foods.'"

---Roman Cookery, Mark Grant [Serif:London] 1999 (p. 154)

[NOTE: Anthimus (c.AD450-520) was a doctor from Constantinople who wrote a medical and culinary treatise. This recipe was translated by Mark Grant from the original Anthimus: On the Observance of Foods.] Recipe for medieval Italian rice pudding (This is probably close to the recipe first introduced to South/North America--rice was an old world food that was first introduced to the New by the European explorers). "Rice in Almonds

For ten guests, wash half a pound of rice two or three times in warm water. When it is washed and cooked, spread on a board until the water has evaporated. Then put in a mortar and grind with a pound of peeled almonds, and put through a sieve into a pan with fresh water. Add a half pound of sugar. It is necessary that it boil a half hour far from flame, on coals, because of smoke, and be stirred with a spoon. Rice can be cooked the same way in goat's milk. Because this dish quickly absorbs smoke, if that should happen, get rid of the smoke this way: transfer the rice from the pot into a clean pan..."

---Platina: On the Right Pleasure and Good Health, critical edition and translation by Mary Ella Milham [original book published in the 15th century] (p. 335) A similar period recipe was blancmanger (with various spellings). This recipe also included fowl or fish, depending upon the Christian calendar. Blawmanger, regular version (chicken)

Blancmanger, Lenten version (fish) Rice pudding was a popular dish during Shakespeare's time. The Bard himself alludes to it's making at a celebratory feast in A Winter's Tale, Act IV, Scene iii, lines 37-49. The book Dining With William Shakespeare by Madge Lorwin reprints an original recipe from Thomas Dawson's The Good Huswifes Jewell (1596): "To Make a Tart of Ryse...boyle your rice, and put in the yolkes of two or three Egges into the Rice, and when it is boyled put it into a dish and season it with sugar, synamon and ginger, and butter, and the juice of two or three Orenges, and set it on the fire againe." Rice pudding recipes

[1615] Gervase Markham's The English Huswife , Gervase Markham

, Gervase Markham [1803] Frugal Housewife , Susannah Carter

, Susannah Carter [1884] Boston Cooking School Cook Book, Mrs. D.A. Lincoln If you would like to try creating a rice pudding that approximates what automat patrons might have eaten during a specific time period, consider the following recipes: "Cream rice pudding

2 tablespoonfuls cold boiled rice,

3 tablespoonfuls sugar,

Yolk 1 egg,

3 tablespoonfuls cornstarch,

2 cupfuls milk,

1/2 teaspoonful McIlhenny's Mexican vanilla Put the milk with the cold rice in a double boiler, add the sugar and salt. When it boils, add the cornstarch wet in a few tablespoonfuls cold milk. Just before it is ready to take from the fire, add the egg and flavoring. Eat cold with whipped cream."

---Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book, Isabel Gordon Curtis [1903] (page 57) "Creamy rice pudding

1 tablespoon uncooked rice.

1 quart milk.

1/2 cup sugar.

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg or cinnamon.

1/2 teaspoon salt.

Wash the rice. Add the other ingredients. Pour the mixture into a baking dish. Cook in a very slow oven (250-275 degrees F.) For 2 or 3 hours, and stir occasionally. Double the quantity of rice may be used and then the pudding does not require such long cooking, but is not so creamy. If desired, one-half cup of raisins my be added and the sugar reduced to one-third cup."

---Aunt Sammy's Radio Recipes Revised, Bureau of Home Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture [1931] (page 101) "Rice pudding

Cook: 2/3 cup Rice

Drain it and rinse it with cold water.

Combine, beat well and add:

1 1/3 cups milk

1/8 teaspoon salt

3 1/2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon soft butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 eggs

Add:

1/3 cup raisins (optional)

1/2 teaspoon grated lemon rind

1 teaspoon lemon juice Combine these ingredients lightly with a fork. Grease a baking dish and cover the bottom and sides with: bread crumbs (optional). Put the rice in it and cover the top with bread crumbs. Bake the pudding in a moderate oven 325 degrees until it is set. Serve it hot or cold with: Cream, Strawberry or Raspberry Hard Sauce, fruit juice or Hot Sherry Sauce."

---The Joy of Cooking, Irma S. Rombauer [1946] (p. 633). Related foods? Bread & tapioca puddings.

Tapioca

What is tapicoa?

An important product of Cassava, and broadly speaking the only one which has a presence in western kitchens. Cassava flour is treated in such a way as to form what are called flakes, seeds, and pearls of tapioca, which consitute an article of commerce known under the name tapioca fancies. Cassava is an American plant, although the main producers are now in Asia and Africa...Tapioca pudding is well known as one of the family of British milk puddings. Like other members of the family, it is sometimes despised by the ignorant, that is to say persons who have no knowledge of how good they are when properly made....Pearl tapioca, rather than the quicker cooking flake kind, is preferred for tapioca pudding, and that available in North America is usually the best..."

---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 782)

"Tapioca is a grainy starch obtained from the fleshy root of the cassava, a tropical American plant of the genus Manihot. The name for it in the Tupi-Guarani languages of South America is tipioca, a compound formed from tipi, 'residue' and ok, squeeze out'; it reflects the way in which the starch was produced by crushing the root fibres, steeping them in water, and then squeezing all the liquid out. Spanish and Portuguese changed the word to tapioca, the form adopted in English in the late eighteenth century. By Mrs. Beeton's time the use of tapioca had become widespread, and she herself writes in glowing terms of its possession of that elusive quality beloved of Victorians, digestibility: Its nutritive properties are large, and as a food for persons of delicate digestion, or for children, it is in great estimation' (Book of Household Management, 1861(. She gives a recipe for tapioca soup, in which it was used for thickening broth, but she also of course mentions tapioca pudding, the tapioca-based milk pudding that for close to the next hundred years was to be a not altogether welcome staple of the British sweet course."

---An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 337)

[1875]

"Tapioca. Tapioca is procured from a plant which grows in British Guiana, and is known to botanists by the name of Jatropha, or Manihot Janipha. The tapioca is procured from the root of the plant which, oddly enough, contains hydrocyanic acid; and it is said that the native Indans poison their arrows from the juice of the root before they begin preparing the tapioca. The native cassava is also prepared from the same plant. Tapioca is a wholesome and nutritious farinaceous food very easy of digestion. It is used for puddings, for thickening soups and sauces, and it is also simply boiled in milk or water as a food as food for invalids. When mixed with other flour it will make very good bread. It would be bought of a respectable dealer, as a spurious kind is sometimes offered for sale made of gum and potato-flour. The jar in the store-cupboard which contains tapioca should be kept closely covered, or insects will get into it."

---Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery [London:1875?] (p. 957)

[1911]

Tapioca Grocer's Encyclopedia/Artemis Ward.

19th century USA tapioca recipes (& tapioca as an ingredient) are availble from Michigan State University's Feeding America (searchable digitable cookbook collection).

Minute tapioca

According to the records of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, Minute brand tapioca was introduced to the American public April 1, 1894 (registration=#0161824, registration year=1922). Competing "quick cook" and "instant" tapioca products also existed. Minute brand tapioca was aggressively advertised on a national level, resulting in popular name recognition. Easier to use than traditional tapioca, this modified natural substance remains in use today.

Company origin & evolution

"Minute Tapioca was incorporated in Massachusetts in March, 1913, succeeding to the business of a company of simlar name organized under the laws of maine, which was organized in September, 1894, as the Whitman Grocery Co., subsequently changing its name...Postum Cereal Co., INco now postum Co., Incl, acquired the Minute Tapioca Co., last fall (1926). ["Minute Tapioca is Excellent Earner," Wall Street Journal, March 28, 1927 (p. 4)]. Postum became part of the new General Foods in 1929. GF still owns the Minute Tapioca trademark.

[1896]

"Minute Tapioca. No more soaking of tapioca. No more hard, soggy lumps. Minute Tapioca requires no soaking, is equal to double the amount of any other tapioca, is cheaper than any other and is absolutely pure."

---display ad, The Youth's Companion, May 7, 1896 (p. 11)

[1914]

"15 minutes from Box to Table. You won't need to starty your dessert hours ahead with Minute Tapioca. Unlike bulk tapioca, it requires no soaking. Just stir it in when you make the pudding. The readiness with which Minute Tapioca is prepared, its delicacy of flavor and pure nutriment make possible a great variety of tempting desserts that men-folk like. You can prepare Minute Tapioca desserts as quickly as you can make a pitcher of lemonade."

---display ad, Boston Cooking School Magazine, May 1, 1914; 18, 10; American Periodicals p. 793

[1923]

Minute Tapioca, company recipe booklet.

[1934]

"Heard the 'glad news' about the new Minute Tapioca" Imagine a tapioca pudding lighter, creamier and more delicately delicious than any you eve tasted in all your days! Here it is--bade with the NEW Minute Tapioca! Your first taste will tell you--here's a pudding as light as a whip, as rich as a custard, as creamy as a Bavarian...Minute Tapioca Cream is now easier than many a 'prepared' pudding to make. Yet it's a real honest-to-goodness home made pudding, full of real nourishment. Economical. A dessert that all the family can enjoy."

---Easy Triumphs with the New Minute Tapioca: 85 recipes with glad news in them, [General Foods Corporation:New York] 1934 (p. 3)

[NOTE: the back of this booklet states Minute Tapioca divison is located in Orange, Mass.]

[1948]

"Dust off the welcome mat for a dessert favorite, back now after a five-year wartime qabsencel It's quick-cooking tapioca. Children love it, and grown-ups go for it, too. Now it's back in countrywide distribution. Desserts aren't all. As a thickener in fruit pies, as a binder in meat loaves and in fish caseroles, it was a prewar favorite with American cooks. Also, if you want a souffle to stand up striaght and tall at the dinner table, add a little tapioca to enforce it so itwon't fail. Minute tapioca was a war casualty, and even the 'mock tapioca' produced from a laboratory-developed starch-producing grass, was so short in supply that it was merely a drop in the pudding pot. For the past five years tapioca has been missing from gorcery shelves because after Pearl Harbor it was no longer possible to import it from Java. The consinued unrest in Java postpones tappioca production there indefinitely, so the manufactuers of the family product in its red and blue box have turned once again to South America, where tapioca had originated but where relatively little of the special quality required for the minute variety had previously been produced. But now good supply lines have been set up with Brazil. There's and interesting story behind the oprigin of the quick cooking, now familar minute tapioca. A sailor (whose name is not known) really started the buisness. Back in 1894, this sailr who was staying at the home of Mrs. Susan Stavers, somewhere near Boston, asked for tapioca pudding. When he was served, he complained it was too coarse and lumpy. It seems he'd tasted better in the tropics! Just as an experiment, he suggested to Mrs. Stavers that she run the tapioca through the coffee grinder. Result--a wonderful pudding and the beginnign of a new business.""

---"Grocers Can Stock Tapioca Again and Family Menus are Back to Normal," Ruth Miller, Christian Science Monitor, April 2, 1948 (p. 16)

[NOTE: Photo of product from Miracles with Minute Tapioca, 1948, here.]

Related dish: rice pudding. Related starches: Cassava, sago & taro.

Summer pudding

"Summer pudding. A favourite English dessert which combines a mixture of summer fruits with bread. Redcurrants...and raspberries are the best fruits to use, but some varieties of gooseberry are suitable, and a small quantity of blackcurrants and very few strawberries may be included. In autumn, blackberries can be substituted. In other countries, corresponding kinds of berry will do very well...In the 19th century this pudding seems to have been known as 'hydropathic pudding' because it was served at health resorts where pastry was forbidden. This name must have begun to seem unattractive or inappropriate early in the 20th century, when the new name summer pudding, which is now universally used, began to appear in print. Until recently it was thought that the earliest recorded use was by Florence Perry (1917) who, on the title page of her attractive book, styled herself The Pudding Lady'...However, it has now been established that a missionary in India, Miss E.S. Poynter (1904), had used the term much earlier, in her book; and that soon afterwards Miss L. Sykes (c. 1912) used it as the title of a recipe which was even closer than Miss Poynter's to those now in use."

---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 770)

"Summer pudding. A British pudding or dessert of mixed summer fruit moulded in a pudding basin lined with overlapping slices of bread. The dish is said to have originated in spas and nursing homes, where it was served to patients as an alternative to heavy puddings made with pastry, and it was known as hydropathic' pudding. Before bread was dosed with additives to prevent it from drying, summer pudding was a popular dish for using up day-old or slightly stale bread and a glut of summer fruit. It is still a popular, fabulous dessert, and it has the advantage of being light but full of flavour."

---Larousse Gastronomique, Completely Revised and Updated [Clarkson Potter:2001] (p. 1163)

[1875?]

"Summer Pudding.

Beat five tablespoonfuls of flour smoothly with a quarter of a pint of milk. Add gradually three-quarters of a pint of milk. Add gradually three-quarters of a pint of boiling milk, and boil the mixture, stirring it all thetime, for five minutes. Pour it out, and let it become partially cook, then add two fresh eggs and half a tea-cupful of sugar. Beat the batter briskly for a few minutes, and stir in a tea-cupful of fresh summer fruit of any kind. Put the mixture into a buttered bowl, tie it securely with a floured cloth, plunge it into boiling water, and keep it boiling quickly till done enough. Turn it out, and serve immediately. Send sweet sauce or powdered sugar to table with it. Time to boil, and hour and a half."

---Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery with Numerous Illustrations, [Cassell, Petter, Galpin:London] 1875? (p. 944) [1894]

"Hydropathic Pudding

This has many names. It is very nice when properly prepared, and the pudding served very cold. Required: fruit, sugar, and bread. Cost, variable; generally moderate.

The nicest fruits for this are raspberries or currants, or a mixture, or strawberries, with or without a few red or black currants; plums are sometimes used. Take a plain mould, and cut a piece of bread to fit the bottom; then put fingers of bread round; the sides should be bevelled a little so that they overlap and prevent the escape of the fruit. The latter is stewed withh enough sugar, and poured in, and a cover of bread put on. A plate with weights on is put on the top, and the pudding put in a cold place to set.

Another way is to line the mould, and then fil up with layers of bread and fruit; and if the bread is cut very thinly, this will be generally liked better than the first mode, as there is less fruit, and it suits the majority better. For a plainer dish a basin may be used, and slices of bread put to line it entirely; then either of the modes can be followed. These should be turned out with care, and may be served plain, or with a simply made custard. They are useful for those who cannot take pastry or rich puddings, and for children."

---Cassell's New Universal Cookery Book, Lizzie Heritage [Cassell and Company:London] 1894 (p. 851) [1936]

"Cold Summer Pudding

Utensils--Two basins, knife, sieve, wooden spoon, saucepan.

Line a buttererd basin with layers of thin slices of bread. Fill the centre with layers of bread. Rub 1 lb. of raspberries and red currants through a sieve and pour this puree into the basin. Stand it in a cold place until all the juice is absorbed by the bread, then turn into a glass dish. Stew 1/2 lb. red currants and 1/2 lb. raspberries with enough sugar to sweeten, until the sugar is dissolved. Rub this through a sieve, or strain it over the pudding. Serve with cream or chilled custard."

---Cookery Illustrated and Household Management, Elizabeth Craig [Odhams Press Ltd.:London] 1936 (p. 41) [1956]

"Summer Pudding

"This may be made two ways. In the first method the pudding is filled with fruits stewed whole, in the second with sieved fruit. This is sometimes preferred, because it is seedless.

Method 1. Line a china bowl or souffle dish wtih slices of bread soaked in the juice of the stewed fruit. Fill the lined bowl with the fruit; black currants, raspberries, red currants, or blackberries and apples mixed. Place one or thwo layers of bread in between the fruit and finish off with a round of bread soaked in juice on top. You press it lay a saucer or plate on it, with a 1 lb. weight on top. leave in the ice-box or a cool place overnight. Turn out and serve with a whipped custard or plain cream.

Method 2. This is exemplified in the following recipe for Blackberry Summer Pudding. "Blackberry Summer pudding (Seedless)

2 apples

1 1/4 lb. blackberries

1/2 pint water

1 1/2-2 oz. sugar

stale white bread

1 heaped teaspoon arrowroot or corn-flour to 1/2 pint juice

Peel, core and thinly slice the apples; wash the blackberries. Put the water into a pan with the sugar, and when dissolved boil rapidly for 5 minutes. Add the fruit, cover, and simmer till pulpy, for approximately 10 minutes. Strain, reserving the juice, rub fruit through an aluminium strainer, then add half the juice, adding more sugar if necessary. Slice bread very thinly, cutting off the crust. Cover the bottom of a china souffle case with the bread, then spoon in enough of the thin puree to cover completely. Continue like this, with layers of bread and puree, until the dish is well filled, making sure thatne ach layer of bread is well soaked with the fruit puree. Lay a small plate on the top with a 1-lb. weight on it and leave overnight. Meanwhile, add a spoonful or two of the remaining juice to the arrowroot. Put this and the juice into a pan and bring to the boil. It should have consistency of thin cream. Leave till cold. Turn out the pudding, pour over a small quantity of the sauce, and serve the rest in a sauce-boat. Cream may be served separately. If properly made there should be no trace of white bread, and the pudding itself should be quite short in consistency. This may well be made with damsons, fresh or bottled."

---The Constance Spry Cookery Book, Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume [Pan Books Ltd.:London] 1956 (p. 906-907)

Spotted Dick & Spotted Dog

The first printed evidence of the phrase "spotted dick," as it relates to food, is attributed to Alexis Soyer, the chef of London's illustrious Reform Club, 1849. Why this term? The Oxford English Dictionary confirms an 19th century colloquial use of the word 'dick' meaning pudding. Spotted is assumed to be alluding to the visual effect created by the raisins or sultanas. Neither the OED nor the food historians offer separate explanations regarding the origin of the related term "spotted dog" as it relates to food.

"Spotted dick is a fine old traditional English dish: a sweet suet pudding, typically cylindrical, and studded with currants or raisins. Its name has made it the target of double entendres as leaden as the pudding itself often is. The first reference to it comes from the Modern Housewife (1849), a cookery book for the middle classes by the French chef Alexis Soyer, who settled in Britain: he gives a recipe, beginning: Plum Bolster, or Spotted Dick--Roll out two pounds of paste...have some Smyrna raisins well washed...' And in 1892 the Pall Mall Gazette reports that the Kilburn Sisters...daily satisfy hundreds of dockers with soup and Spotted Dick'. The origin of dick is not clear, but there are records of its more general use, meaning pudding', in the nineteenth century: an 1883 glossary of Hudderfield terms, for instance, gives Dick, plain pudding. If with treacle sauce, treacle dick. An alternative name, spotted dog, had appeared by the middle of the nineteenth century: For supper came smoking sheep's heads...and "spotted dog," a very marly species of plum-pudding' (C.M. Smith, Working-men's Way in the World, 1854)."

---An A-Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 321)

"Spotted Dick and spotted dog are both popular British suet puddings which are spotted' with raisins. Strickly speaking, spotted dick is of the roly poly' type...with raisins and sugar spread on a flat sheet which is rolled up; and spotted dog is a plain cylindar with raisins or currants and sugar mixed with suet paste, so that it has visible spots on the outside. Both, correctly, should be boiled in a cloth, but are often now baked."

---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 748)

Recipes for spotted dick are hard to find in most period cookbooks. That does not ncecessarily mean recipes of this sort are omitted. It sometimes means the item is listed under a different name. There are dozens of variations. Generally, they are noted as "economical" dishes. Compare Mr. Soyer's recipe with Mrs. Beeton's:

Soyer [1860]

"339. Spotted Dick.--Put three-quarters of a pound of flour into a basin, half a pound of beef suet, half ditto of currants, two ounces of sugar, a little cinnamon, mix with two eggs and two gills of milk; boil in either mould or cloth for one hour and a half; serve with melted butter, and a little sugar over."

---Shilling Cookery for the People, Alexis Soyer, facsimile 1860 reprint edition [Pryor Publications:Kent] 1999 (p. 130) Beeton [1863]

"336. Boiled Currant Pudding (Plain and Economical)

Ingredients.--1 lb of flour, 1/2 lb. Of suet, 1/2 lb. Of currants, milk.

Mode.--Wash the currants, dry them thoroughly, and pick away any stalks or grit; chop the suet finely; mix all the ingredients together, and moisten with sufficient milk to make the pudding into a stiff batter; tie it up in a floured cloth, put it into boiling water, and boil for 3 1/2 hours; serve with a cut lemon, cold butter, and sifted sugar.

Time, 3 1/2 hours. Average cost, 10d. Sufficient for 7 or 8 persons. Seasonable, at any time."

---Englishwoman's Cookery Book, Mrs. Isabella Beeton [Ward, Lock, and Tyler:London] 1863 (p. 160)

"In Ireland soda bread is prepared with either white or wholewheat flour. Brown soda bread is popularly served with smoked salmon. A sweet version of the bread can also be prepared with the addition of sugar and currants, raisins, or sultanas; this is known by a variety of names including spotted dick, spotted dog, and railway cake."

---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 732)

Queen of puddngs

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd editon, accessed online), "Queen of the Pudding" and "queen's pudding," are one in the same. This dish is essentially a steamed suet pudding. The oldest print reference provided is from 1884 (Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery 675/2 'Queen's Pudding.' Food historians tell us this recipe is almost identical to Manchester pudding, which may indicate where the recipe originated. "Queen's pudding, or queen of the puddings, as the name of a pudding, seems not to have a very long history. As a dish, however, it apparently goes back to the 17th century. Sir Kenelm Digby (1669) gave a recipe for a dish like modern queen's pudding: breadcrumbs combined with milk and egg yolks, part baked, and then topped with jam and meringue made from the whites and baked until done. What queen may have been involved or how is unclear. There is a recipe for 'Queen Pudding' in Garrett (c. 1825); but it is not the same as queen's pudding above. This same book does, however, have a recipe for Manchester Pudding, which matches one given by Mrs. Beeton (1861) and may provide a clue. A Manchester pudding has a layer of puff pastry at the bottom of the dish and does not have a meringue topping. Otherwise it is more or less the same as queen's pudding. The evidence perhaps suggests that queen's pudding received its name at about the beginning of the 20th century; and at that time there was only one queen who could have inspired the name (no doubt after commenting favourably on a helping of Manchester pudding, possibly in the course of a royal visit to that city) and that of course was Queen Victoria. Be that as it may, queen's pudding in its modern form is one of the best British puddings."

----Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 644) "Queen of Puddings. One of the classic English puddings, queen of puddings consists of bread-crumb and custard mixture with a layer of jam and then meringue on top. It seems to have originated in the nineteenth century (although neither Eliza Acton nor Mrs. Beeton mention it.)"

---An A to Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 274)

[1875]

"Queen's Pudding.--Butter a plain mould or basin rather thickly with butter, flour it well, and stick raisins, slices of candied peel or dried fruit over the inside rows. Fill the basin with layers of bread and butter, and put between each layer sugar flavoured with lemon rind, blanched and sliced almonds, and candied peel. Pour over the whole a mint of milk which has been mixed with four well-beaten eggs. Cover the basin closely, and boil or steam the pudding. Time to boil the pudding, half an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. Sufficient, if made in a quart mould, for five or six persons."

---Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery with Numerous Illustrations [Cassell, Petter, Galpin:London] 1875(p. 675, column 2) Related recipe? Bread pudding & Summer pudding.

What was roly-poly pudding?

A survey of period cookbooks confirms this particular pudding was popular in Victorian times. It was most often served up as a sweet dish, but savory recipes exist as well. It was also referred to by Charles Dickens (Bleak House) and Beatrix Potter (The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or The Roly Poly Pudding). "Roly-poly pudding, a widely used name for a suet pudding made in a roll shape. The name is generally given to a pudding with a sweet filling such as jam, or treacle and breadcrumbs, or mixed dried fruits with marmelade; in each case spread over a flat sheet of dough and rolled up...Formerly roly-poly pudding was boiled in a pudding cloth; but the skill of enclosing a pudding of this shape in a cloth has now mostly been lost. Since it could not be adapated to a basin as could a round pudding, it is now almost invariably baked."

---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 668) Selected historic recipes

[1845]

"Rolled pudding.

Roll out thin a bit of light puff paste, or a good suet crust, and spread equally over it to within an inch of the edge, any kind of fruit jam. Orange marmealade, and mincemeat make excellent varieties of this pudding, and a deeplpayer of fine brown sugar, flavoured with the grated rind and strained juice of one very large, or of two small, lemons, answers for it extremely well. Roll it up carefully, pinch the paste together at the ends, fold a cloth round, secure it well at the ends, and boil the pudding from one to two hours, according to its size and the nature of the ingredients. Half a pound of flour made into a paste with suet or butter, and covered with preserve, will be quite sufficiently boiled in an hour and a quarter."

---Modern Cookery for Private Families, Eliza Acton, 1845 facimile edition with an introduction by Elizabeth Ray [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1993 (p. 351) [1861] Rolled Treacle Pudding , Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, Isabella Beeton (recipe 1372)

[1875]

"Roly-poly Pudding.--The pastry for this favourite pudding may be made in three or four ways, according to the degree of richness required. For a superior pudding mix a pound of flour with a half pound of very finely-shred suet, freed from skin and fibre. Add a good pinch of salt, an egg, and nearly half a pint of milk. Roll it out three or four times. For a plainer pudding, mix five or six ounces of suet with a pound of flour, add a pinch of salt, and make a paste by stirring in a half a pint of water. When suet is objected to, rub six ounces of butter or six ounces of sweet dripping into a pound of flour, and proceed as before. When a similar quantity still of dripping is used, the addition of a spoonful of baking-powder sill help to make the pastry light. Roll out the pastry to a long thin form, a quarter of an inch thick, and of a width to suit the size of the saucepan in which it is to be boiled. Spread over it a layer of any kind of jam, and be careful that it does not reach the edges of the pastry. Begin at one end, and roll it up to fasten the jam inside, moisten the edges and press them securely together. Dip a cloth in boiling water, flour it well, and tie the pudding tightly in it. Plunge it into a saucepan of boiling water, at the bottom of which a plate has been laid to keep the pudding from burning, and boil quickly until done enough. If it is necessary to add more water, let it be put in boiling. Marmalade, treacle, sliced lemon and sugar, lemon-juice and sugar, chopped apples and currants, either separately of together, may be used instead of jam for a change. Time to boil the pudding, one hour and a half to two hours, according to the size."

---Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery with Numerous Illustrations [Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co:London] 1875 (p. 769)

[1936]

"Roly-Poly Pudding

1 lb. Suet Paste.

Jam, or Treacle.

Utensils: Basin, knife, pastry board, rolling pin, wooden spoon, pudding-cloth, saucepan. Enough for 6 persons.

Make 1 lb. of geeo suet paste, as described on page 331, and roll it out to a quarter of an inch in thickness. Spread it evenly over with any kind of jam, or with treacle, to within an inch of the edges, and roll it up carefuly. Wet the paste and press it firmly together at the ends. Fold a well-buttered cloth round, tie it at the ends, and tighly pin it in the centre. Boil the pudding for 1 1/2 hours, and when cooked, remove the cloth carefully. A nice, sweet sauce can be poured over and around the roly-poly; and, if liked, the top can be sprinkled with castor sugar and shredded pistachio nuts."

---Cookery and Household Management, Elizabeth Craig [Odhams Press:London] 1936 (p. 336-337)

Suet Paste

1 lb. Flour.

Pinch of Salt.

6 oz, Beef Suet.

1/2 pint cold water.

Free the suet from all skin and shreds, and chop it very finely. Put the lfour, and a pinch of salt, into a basin, and rub the chopped suet well into it. Mix into a smooth dough, with about half a pint of cold water, then roll out, and use. Less suet may be used for a very plain paste, or for a very righ one use a little more. The quantities first given are for a good ordinary paste for boiled fruit or meat puddings, or suet dumplings. The most important point in obtaining a successful paste is chopping the suet very finely."

---ibid (p. 331)

About puddings.