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Saturday, March 18, 2023

Honeycomb Pudding

I found this in The Ideal Cookery Book: A Reliable Guide for Home Cooking, by Lilian Clarke, Third Edition (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69876), copyright 1905. The title had me curious, especially since there was no honey in the recipe. Maybe a honeycomb texture, something like a mousse? Nope. An online search did turn up a cooking video for a similar recipe on Glen and Friends Cooking (a great website, by the way) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZK-VGns-nM) but it came out as a two-part pudding where mine was a solid custard. Not sure if that’s because my recipe didn’t contain lemons or because the instructions were different. Anyway, the results were good and I’d make it again.

Here’s the recipe as written in the cookbook:

3 teacups milk
3 eggs
1 small teacup sugar
½ ounce gelatin

Soak gelatine for 1 hour in a teacup of milk, put the remainder of the milk over the fire with the sugar and gelatin till dissolved.

Add beaten yolks of eggs to the milk and stir well until on the verge of boiling.

Have the whites beaten to a stiff froth in a bowl, into which pour the contents of the pan. Stir up quickly and pour into a mould until set.

And here’s my interpretation:

3 eggs, separated
1 pinch cream of tartar
2/3 cup sugar
1 packet gelatin
1 cup 15% cream*
1 ¼ cups milk
vanilla if liked

Beat egg whites and cream of tartar to a stiff froth. Place in medium bowl.

In saucepan, stir together sugar and gelatin. Add milk and cream and continue stirring over low heat until dissolved.

Beat egg yolks and gradually stir into the milk mixture. Turn up the heat and keep stirring until almost boiling.

Pour over egg whites. Whisk together. You could put it in a mould at this point, but I didn't bother and just left it in the bowl I mixed it in. Cool, then refrigerate.

*or just use 2 ¼ cups milk. I subbed in cream because I have 2% milk in my fridge and I figure the original recipe probably used whole milk.