History Bakers: Orraning pudding (The Great British Bake Off - Week 6 – Pastry)

To tie in with the Great British Bake Off this year staff at the History Centre have decided to gather historic recipes and try them out. With pastry week behind us here is one of our recipes for a pastry pudding.

This recipe comes again from the Sykes family collection [U DDSY], this time it is a 17th century recipe book. However, what we are looking at is a transcript from 1918 created while Sir Mark Sykes was head of the family. While the original has been lost the transcript captures the 17th century feel of the recipe and particularly the interesting spelling! I picked the recipe for the interesting spelling of orange and for the fact that it felt very different to anything I’ve baked before and hoped it would provide both interest and challenge, which it certainly did!

Image: The recipe and ingredients

In case you want to give it a go yourself I've included my best 21st century translation. 

• Peel the skins of 4 oranges, put them in cold water and set them to boil for 10-15 mins
• Drain and transfer the peel into another pan of boiling water and boil for another 10-15 mins until less bitter, then drain well
• Beat the peel in a pestle and mortar until pulp like
• Add 6 egg yolks, 227g of butter, 227g of caster sugar and 227g of grated white bread and beat until combined
• Add a few splashes of double cream and mix until it reaches the consistency of a cake batter
• Line a greased dish with puff pastry about the thickness of a pound coin and add in your pudding mix
• Bake for around an hour depending on the size of your tin until the pudding mix begins to brown on top

I have to say the beginning was the part which confused and scared me the most it involved boiling the orange peel twice until, “the bitter be clean gon out them”! Having never encountered this before I did a bit of a search and found this is a way to indeed reduce the bitterness of the orange peel and it suggested removing as much of the white part as possible and slicing them up into strips which I then did and then boiled them for a 2nd time as directed. All in all, I probably boiled them for about 10-15 minutes, twice. 

Image: Oranges on the boil

At this point I’ll admit I was unsure how these would work in a cake batter of sorts but I pressed on with my (very small!) pestle and mortar. To my (pleasant) surprise I found that they did mash into a juicer, pulp like consistency. However, at this point I did begin to grow impatient and felt held back by the size of my pestle and mortar. I decided to make the switch to my (very 17th century!) blender which was definitely quicker and produced this strange pulp like substance resembling something like pumpkin puree! I was slightly concerned about the slightly chunkier bits of skin remaining so ended up removing some pieces in the hopes of achieving a smoother texture although possibly sacrificing some of the orange flavour.

Image: Mashing/blending the peel

Then it was time to mix all the ingredients together, slightly more comfortable territory. This involved grating white bread (creating quite a lot of mess!), separating 6 egg yolks and leaving me wondering what I’ll do with 6 egg whites… 

Here I assumed I was aiming for something like the consistency of cake batter and used my own intuition to add “a litell cream” for which I added a few drizzles of double cream until it had the consistency I wanted. 

Image: Mixing the ingredients 

Then it was time for the pastry, the instructions were again a little sparse here, I was told to “do some puff past about the dish edgg” which I took to mean line a dish with some puff pastry. For the thickness they stipulated it had to be not too thick but not too thin. Here I decided to revert to the wisdom of M&S and their ready rolled puff pastry – if it’s good enough for Mary Berry it’s good enough for me! I added the pudding mixture into the puff pastry and put it in my preheated oven. 

This point felt very Bake Off because there’s no instructions about temperature or time for baking, simply to, “bake”! I decided on a safe temperature of 180 C (fan) not wanting it too high for fearing of burning the pastry but leaving the pudding raw. In true Bake Off style I put it in and thought the best method would be to stare into the oven until it looked done!! I thought this might be about 20 minutes, it did in fact turn out to be closer to an hour! 

Image: The pastry prior to adding the pudding mixture

The recipe then said to serve it with rosewater and sugar for [sauce]. Only once I started did I realise I basically seemed to be making a caramel of sorts which completely terrifies me (I have no idea how you make it without it burning and sticking to the pan!) So, for fear of burning it, I ended up with a sugary, rosewater flavoured liquid which inevitably hardened into something that was not a sauce at all but in fact just rose flavoured sugar. Overall, an enjoyable experience in which I learnt a lot, not least about boiling orange peel!

Some of my colleagues’ comments:

Caoimhe – “Scrummy! Subtle flavour of the orange – thought it would be ‘too orangey’ but”

Pete – “A strange dish that shouldn’t work, but does – a yin and yang of sweet and savoury contend for dominance in the mouth – the ultimate winner is your taste buds who are richly rewarded for their adventurous spirit. Like a giant orange toad in the hole – 10/10.”

Kyle – “Very tasty filling, an odd combination with the pastry but not bad”

Sol – “Very good! Enjoyed the pastry and the soft filling. It was nice and sweet, not as tarte as I expected. Would happily eat this again.”

Lucy – “Delicious! Somehow a bit sweet and savoury, definitely an interesting combination. I really enjoyed!”

Anna – “Very lovely! Perfect texture and very moist. The orange flavour is just right. Excellent!”

Bonus review from my housemate, Rosemary! – “Really good! It’s giving pastel de nata vibes. Subtle orangey taste, obvious but not overpowering. Pecan pie texture? Can’t completely place it, tastes great though!”