Thursday, September 18, 2014

Cheese Puddings.


A short while ago, I gave you a story entitled  Cheshire Cheese Pudding, and it rapidly became clear that some of you felt misled and were ultimately disappointed that there was no recipe for a pudding made with Cheshire Cheese. The story referred to a pudding tradition at a London pub with a venerable history - Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, in Fleet Street.

To make things right, to the disappointed reader or three, I give several cheese puddings today. The first one is most interesting. Look at the amount of sugar it contains!

Cheese Pudding.
Four eggs, one cupful of sugar, half a small cupful of grated Parmesan cheese, one cupful of flour, two teaspoonfuls of yeast-powder, one  pinch of salt, and one quart of milk. Bake half an hour; serve as soon as baked, and eat with hard sauce.
Los Angeles Cookery, by the Los Angeles Ladies' Aid Society, 1881

And few more variations on the cheese pudding theme for you:

To make pretty little Cheese-curd Puddings.
You must take a Gallon of Milk, and turn it with Runnet, then drain all the Curd from the Whey, put the Curd into a Mortar and beat it with half a Pound of fresh butter till the Butter and Curd are well-mixed; then beat six Eggs, half the Whites, and strain them to the Curd, two Naples Biscuits, or half a penny roll grated; mix all these together, and sweeten to your Palate; butter your Patty Pans, and fill them with the Ingredients. Bake them, but don’t let your Oven be too hot; when they are done, turn them out into a Dish, cut Citron and candied Orange-peel cut in long Slips, stick them here and there on the Tops of the Puddings, just as you fancy; pour melted Butter with a little Sack in it into the Dish, and throw fine Sugar all over the Puddings and Dish.  They make a pretty Side-dish.
The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy; by Hannah Glasse (1758 ed)

Cheese-Pudding.
Grate Cheshire, or new rich Dunlop, or any mild melting cheese, in the proportion of a half-pound to two beat eggs, with a little oiled butter, cream, and a large tablespoonful of finely-grated bread. Bake in a small dish lined with puff-paste, or omit the paste, as in other puddings, at discretion.
Another, plainer and better. Grate the cheese; use but one egg, and melt the whole in a small saucepan with milk, or, if for a supper-relish, with ale or porter; use two tablespoonfuls of finely-sifted crumbs. Pour the mixture into a small buttered pudding-dish, and brown it in the Dutch oven. Made-mustard may be added.
The cook and housewife's manual, by Margaret Dods [Christian Isobel Johnstone],
1862 edn.


Cheese Pudding.
Take a quarter of a pound of excellent cheese; rich, but not strong or old. Cut it in small bits, and then beat it (a little at a time) in a marble mortar. Add a quarter of a pound of the best fresh butter. Cut it up, and pound it in the mortar with the cheese, till perfectly smooth and 'well mixed. Beat five eggs till very thick and smooth. Mix them, gradually, with the cheese and butter. Put the mixture into a deep dish with a rim. Have ready some puff-paste, and lay a broad border of it all round the edge, ornamenting it handsomely. Set it immediately into a moderate oven, and bake it till the paste is browned, and has risen very high all round the edge of the dish. Sift white sugar over it before it goes to table.
It is intended that the cheese taste shall predominate. But, if preferred, you may make the mixture very sweet by adding powdered sugar; it may be seasoned with nutmeg and mace. Either way is good.
It may be baked in small patty-pans, lined at the bottom and sides with puff-paste. Bemove them from the tins as soon as they come out of the oven, and place them on a large dish.
This pudding is very nice made of rich fresh cream cheese; the rind, of course, being pared off. Cream cheese pudding will require sugar and spice—that is, a heaped tea-spoonful of powdered nutmeg, mace, and cinnamon, all mixed; two ounces of fresh butter, and six eggs.

Miss Leslie's New Cookery Book (1857)

2 comments:

korenni said...

I wonder whether these puddings would be the same as "cheesecakes" in the early 1800s? In one of Georgette Heyer's Regency romances (can't remember which one), one of the characters says, "Got an idea! Came to me with the cheesecakes!" to which the other replies, "What a tribute to the cook!"

Some of these recipes look pretty tasty (although I have a hard time imagining parmesan and sugar being eatable). May try them out.

Anonymous said...

Old Foodie (Ms.? Mr.?,

As you can see, I'm new here. I found you by accident, I was googling Baron Brisse just to see what popped up and here you are! Actually, it's more like "there you were." It was a 2007 piece in your archives about the Baron that google led me to.

I'm curious, have you actually tried out any of the Baron's recipes? A few years ago I had to make several "Bacon and Leek Brisses" for a wine tasting. The recipes were simple but I was curious what the term "brisse" actually referred to.

I didn't find what I was looking for but I did find a nice little tidbit in my old copy of Larousse. It seems the Baron was a bit of a character. When writing recipes, he seemed to feel that style was more important than exactness:

"His recipes were romanticized. They were not at all precise and at times even in executable."

I never did find a specific meaning for "brisse."

(The quote comes from the Larousse Gastronomique (pub. 1961)