Hello 2022! It's going to be a busy year with two momentous occasions coming up. Firstly - the Commonwealth Games – not only being held in Birmingham but making use of our brilliant King Edwards facilities. Secondly, the Queen's Platinum Jubilee for which lots of celebration plans are in the works all over the country.
Fortnum & Mason, for example, is launching a competition to find a dish celebrating the Queen’s 70 years on the throne, marking the beginning of official jubilee festivities. Judged by experts such as Dame Mary Berry and Monica Galetti, entrants across the nation will be submitting what they think is the perfect steamed/baked/pie/crumble/cake/tart to win the title of ‘Platinum Pudding’.
The first place I looked for a recipe was ‘King Edward’s Cookery Book’ by Florence A George, who was appointed Cookery Mistress at KEHS in 1894. Ms George viewed cooking as a science which all girls should study and published the book in 1901 as a text-book for all.
Queens Pudding
[Picked purely for the name!]
Ingredients – 1 pint milk, 4oz breadcrumbs, 2oz butter, 3 eggs, Lemon flavouring, 3 tablespoonfuls jam, 4oz castor-sugar, 1/2 oz granulated sugar.
Boil the milk, add the breadcrumbs, cook for a minute. Take off the fire, add the granulated sugar, butter, yolks of eggs and flavouring, pour into a buttered pie-dish. Bake for about half an hour. Spread the jam over, whip the whites till stiff, add 4oz of castor sugar, pile roughly on top of the pudding and sprinkle with sugar. Put in a cool oven and bake until crisp, about 20 minutes.
Coronation Mould
Ingredients – ½ pint champagne jelly (for the border mould), ¼ pint champagne jelly (for the crown mould). For the plain mould – ½ pint cream, 2 crystallised oranges, 1 ½ oz glace cherries, ¼ oz pistachios, 1 teaspoonful sugar, 2oz praline (4oz sugar & 5oz almonds, browned and pounded), ¼ oz gelatine (dissolved in 2 tablespoofuls milk), 1 tablespoonful orange liqueur, 4 tablespoonfuls liquid jelly
Decorate seven small crown moulds and fill with jelly. Mask a souffle tin (size one pint) with jelly. Cut the oranges in quarters, the cherries in halves, and the nuts. Whip the cream, mix all the ingredients together and pour into the tin. When set, turn onto a border of jelly (mould, half-pint sized), arrange the small crowns around the sides and one on top. Decorate with cherries and strawberry leaves of marzipan.
Charlotte Russe
Ingredients – ¼ lb sponge biscuits, 1 ½ gills milk, vanilla pod, 1 ½ oz sugar, ¼ oz gelatine, 2 yolks of eggs, ½ pint cream, 2 tsp maraschino, 1 ratafia
Choose a cake tin 4 ½ inches in diameter with straight sides and line with the biscuits. Put the milk with a piece of vanilla pod into a saucepan, bring to boiling point and leave to infuse for a few minutes. Pour gradually on to the eggs and sugar, return to the saucepan with the gelatine and stir over the fire until dissolved. Strain into a basin. When cool add the cream, which should be whipped up stiffly. Flavour with a little maraschino. Pour into the mould, leave till set, turn out and put the ratafia in the centre of the top.
Do you know of a different pudding that has a connection to King Edwards? Or do you like one of the above? Please let us know your thoughts by submitting them via email to keviarchive@ske.uk.net and our intrepid (if rather foolhardy) Archivist will attempt to make the most popular dish.
