And Now for Easter Pudding.

The Easter food theme continues today with three very different versions of Easter Pudding.
Firstly, from The Original Buckeye Cookbook (1905)

Easter Pudding.
One pint sweet milk, yolks of three eggs, two tablespoons corn-starch, three of sugar, and a little salt. Put milk in custard kettle, and when boiling add sugar, then starch dissolved in
a little cold milk, and lastly yolks ; beat, and let cook a few minutes, and turn out in broad dish to cool. When it stiffens around the edges, transfer it, a few spoonfuls at a time, to a bowl, and whip vigorously with an egg beater. Flavor with rose-water. It should be like a yellow sponge; when put into a crown mold.
Make day before wanted. When ready to serve turn out upon dish, fill centre with whipped cream, flavored with vanilla and heaped up as high as it will stand. Pile more whipped cream about the base.
Or With Fruit, while the corn-starch mixure is still hot put a little in a large mold and turn to let it run and leave a thin coating all over inside. Ornament by sticking candied cherries to this in any regular forms liked, fill loosely with fresh or preserved fruits, macaroons and crumbed sponge cake, soaked in orange juice, and a little citron cut very thin; then pour in slowly until full remainder of corn-starch, which must have been kept warm by standing in hot water so that it would not stiffen.
Let stand in cold place all night to become very firm and serve with Marigold Sauce.
Marigold Sauce.
Four tablespoons butter seven of best powered sugar, half cup fruit juice, cup cream, half a nutmeg, yolk of six eggs ; scald cream in custard kettle, beat butter, sugar and eggs together; add nutmeg, pour hot cream over all, add juice and serve.

Secondly, a very elegant dish for gentlefolk, from The Country Gentleman’s Magazine (London, 1868) – a recipe which appears, of course in the section for Country Gentlewomen.


An Easter Pudding.
To 4 oz of fresh rice flour. add by slow degrees half a pint of cold new milk. being careful to keep the mixture free from lumps. Pour it into a pint of boiling milk. and stir it without intermission over a very clear and gentle fire for three or four minutes; then throw in 2 oz. of fresh butter and 2 of pounded sugar, and continue the boiling for eight or ten minutes longer. Let the rice cool down, and give it an occasional stir to prevent the surface from hardening. When it has stood for fifteen or twenty minutes, pour to it a quarter of a pint of cold mil,k and stir well into it a few grains of salt, the grated rind of a large sound lemon, five full sized or six small eggs properly cleared and well whisked, first by themselves and then with two additional ounces of pounded sugar. Beat up these ingredients thoroughly together, pour them into a deep dish which has been rubbed with butter, and in which about a tablespoonful should be left liquefied, that it may rise to the surface of the pudding; strew lightly upon it 4 oz. of clean dry currants, and bake it gently from three quarters of an hour to a full hour. Some nutmeg, a spoonful or two of brandy, and an ounce or two of citron sliced thin can be added if thought desirable. The pudding will be excellent if the baking be well conducted. A border of ratafias laid on the edge of the dish and fastened to it with a little beaten white of egg mingled with a dust of flour, after it is drawn from the oven, will give a nice finish to its appearance; or cakes of pale puff crust not so large as a shilling, may be used for the purpose when preferred. Should a richer pudding be liked, use for it the yolks of seven or of eight eggs and the whites of four, and if it be baked in an American oven, let it be placed sufficiently high in front of the fire for the heat to be well reflected to the under part; for when this is not attended to, recipes will often fail from want of more uniform baking - the surface of a dish being even overdone, while the inside has been but slightly acted on by the fire. When time will permit it, is better to allow the rice for this pudding to become nearly or quite cold before the eggs are stirred to it.

And last, but by no means least, a dish guaranteed to delight the little ones. From the San Rafael Cook Book (1906), I give you the recipe for a nest of Easter eggs:

Easter Pudding.
Make 1 quart of wine, orange or lemon jelly; mold in a round basin in the center of which you have three saucers turned upside down. Save 1 dozen egg shells opened at the small end, and put them in cold water. Make 1 quart of corn starch blanc mange; fill three of the shells, and stand them in a pan of bran or meal. Bruise a few spinach leaves, squeeze out a few drops of the color, add to a little of the mixture, and fill three more shells. Color some with chocolate, some with the yolks of eggs, and some pink from a little of Knox’s pink gelatine. While you are preparing the eggs, have the skin from 2 oranges or 2 lemons boiling; when tender, remove all of the white inside [and discard], and cut [the colored peel] in little strips with scissors; then boil in syrup until clear, and spread out to dry. The next day, turn out the jelly; around the edge of the nest put the peel for straw. Remove the shells from the eggs and pile in the nest; put whipped cream all around the jelly. This is a very pretty dish and delights the children.

Quotation for the Day.

The best part of Easter is eating your children’s candy while they are sleeping, and then trying to convince them in the morning that the Easter rabbit came with one ear.
Anna Quindlen.