New Year's Marrow Pudding - Modern Recipe and Historical Inpiration

Having some bone marrow and seeing a baked marrow pudding included in Robert May’s 1660 bill of fare or menu for New Year’s Day, I decided to try something similar.

I will give you the thought process for a modern adaptation I made from a few period recipes first, then the modern recipe and finally a look at the historic cookery book entries that I tried to bring together.

This is a bread pudding with beef bone marrow and raisins and a custardy sauce, so all our cards are on the table.

To summarize what I included and what I did not from six sets of instructions published in the seventeenth and eighteen centuries. First, I used white bread from a French loaf; William Rabisha and Robert May talk about using a similar period loaf in their recipes. I used this instead of lady finger-type biscuits, which are used by a couple authors. The dried fruit component I used was raisins, not currents, following all but one recipe. Like Rabisha’s recipe I layered the bread, marrow and raisins and then poured a sauce over top. One recipe uses milk but I used cream as the others instructed. To make it a little more interesting and maybe more challenging I used that cream with the eggs to make a custard sauce, also as Rabisha’s version directs. Most of the recipes used twice as many egg yolks as whites and I went with that ratio. I added a puff pastry decoration to the rim of the dish like three of the cooks said to do. I buttered the dish but did not use a pastry shell or, as one recipe says, a base of apples. I seasoned the custard mixture with nutmeg, cinnamon and sugar; I did not use ambergris or musk as in Robert May’s recipe. Trying to keep things a bit simple and trying to use as much in common from the recipes as possible I also did not use suet, mace, rosewater, Sack or fortified wine, dates, Orangado or other candied fruit or anything else to garnish the top of the dish. These ingredients were called for by one or more authors.

There were three modern cheats/food safety practices that I employed that were not mentioned in the recipes:

1. I soaked the marrow bones overnight (see instructions).
2. When making the custard with the eggs and cream, I tempered the eggs before combining them. Rabisha just says to let the cream cool enough (again details in instructions).
3. I bought puff pastry for the garnish.

Recipe

Ingredients

• Salt for preparing marrow bones
• 250g (9oz) bone marrow from 6 small bones or 2/3 large. If getting from a butcher, try to get them cut length-wise.
• 4 eggs, 2 separated and those whites saved for another use; all beaten well
• 473 ml (1 pint) of whipping cream
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• Butter for greasing dish
• 6 slices of French or white bread (enough to make three layers in your dish), sliced into strips.
• 120g (about ¼ lbs) of raisins
• 200g grams of made or store-bought puff pastry (optional)

Instructions

- Put your marrow bones in a large bowl with enough cold water to cover. Add a Tbsp of salt and let sit for 3 to 4 hours in the fridge. Repeat this process 4 times. This will pull out most of the blood and impurities. This seasons the marrow as well so I did not use salt in the recipe.

- If your bone marrow is still in smaller bones that are cut cross wise, cook them at 225C (450F) for a few minutes. Watch them closely, you are cooking them just until they are loose enough to spoon out the marrow. If the bones are cut lengthwise, simply scrape the marrow out.

- Preheat your oven to 190C (375F).

- Prepare a medium dish/casserole by greasing it with butter. Place 2 slices (1/3) of your bread strips, 1/3 of your bone marrow, and 1/3 of your raisins at the bottom of the dish.

- Repeat two more layers.

- If you want a puff pastry garnish, roll out your pastry. Cut whatever design you would like in it, which allows you to then press the pastry to the inside rim of your dish, just above the last bread/raisin/marrow layer.

- Place your beaten eggs in a large bowl, mix your sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg into them.

- Place your cream in a small saucepan over medium high heat and just bring to a boil. Immediately remove from the heat. Turn your burner down to medium low.

- Gradually whisk about a half a cup of the hot cream into the egg mixture to temper them.

- Return your cream to the heat and whisk in the tempered eggs.

- Cook, stirring constantly, until it reaches a custard state. I.e., it coats the back of a spoon and if you make a line across it with your finger, the line holds.

- Pour this custard over your bread layers in your dish.

Bake in the oven for 40 minutes. (Watch your pastry garnish, it may need to be covered with foil at the end, if you don’t want it too brown.)

Bread pudding is not something I have usually sought out but I very much enjoyed this. I like the spicing; you might use a little less sugar for many modern palates, or maybe a touch more salt. The savory bone marrow sinks into the bread and at the edges and bottom of the pan, the bread crisps up a bit. That and the puff pastry garnish provide a little textural difference.

Historical Inspiration

Robert May’s marrow pudding is, like a many of his recipes, quite extravagant. This includes the title; the instructions are included in the 2nd (1665) edition of his The Accomplist Cook as: “To make a most rare and excellent Marrow Pudding in a dish baked; and garnish the Dish brims with Puff-paste.”

The base is marrow from four bones, and two pinemolets, probably the French pain mollets – literally “soft bread,” a term used now for dinner rolls. To that, he adds raisins, dates, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, Sack wine, rose water, ambergris and musk. Some of those are even more expensive than the spices and sugar would be in the period. There is a little confusion about how many eggs but removing half the whites seems a standard practice that shows up in other recipes. He also does not mention, other than in the title, his use of puff paste or puff pastry.

William Rabisha was a similar contemporary of May’s: he mainly wrote for courtly houses and their professional staff. He has instructions in his 1661 The Whole Body of Cookery Dissected: “To make a baked Marrow Pudding.”

He makes a kind of custard bread pudding by first boiling a quart of spiced cream, removing from the heat and mixing in eight yolks and four egg whites, beaten. In addition to the cinnamon and mace in the cream, he adds rosewater, sugar and nutmeg to the combined mixture. He lines the rim of a dish with pastry garnishes and lays sippets (small pieces) of bread on the bottom, then marrow, dates, raisins and “Orangado and other suckets.” Orangado, as I explain in a previous entry, is a candied Seville orange and suckets, in this case probably means other candied fruits. He pours some of the cream mixture over that and repeats the process in two or three layers.

Hannah Woolley wrote different kinds of cookery book, less opulent and directed to the beginning growths of a middle class, often to non-professional cooks or servants. Her recipes reflect that.

In her second book, The Cook’s Guide from 1664, she has instructions: “To make a good Pudding.” She like May combines most of the main ingredients together from the start.

She uses “crump of a penny loaf;” “crump” could mean hard or crusty in the period, referring to bread, and she probably means the crust. The ratio of two yolks to one full egg is maintained. The seasoning is just “spice” along with sugar and a little salt. She also adds suet and lines the bottom of her dish with butter and pippins or apples. The marrow is put on top and sugar is scraped over after it is baked.

In her follow-up book, The Queen-Like Closet from 1670, Woolley has a very basic variation under the title: “To make Bisket Pudding.”

She uses Naples biscuits, a predecessor to modern lady fingers "cut into milk.” That mixture is boiled and “Egg, Spice, Sugar, Marrow, and a little Salt” are added and it is boiled again, then baked.

In 1683, a cookery instructor, now only known as M.H. published recipes for “ALL LADIES AND GENTLEWOMEN, Especially those that are my SCHOLARS,” as The Young Cooks Monitor: or, Directions for Cookery and Distilling. The author also tells the reader “How to make a Marrow Pudding.”

Ten egg yolks and six whites are beaten and strained into a quart of cream, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt, rosewater, sack and sugar are added. A dish is buttered and then marrow from three bones, a penny white loaf cut into pieces and a half pound of raisins are place in the bottom. Like some of the earlier upscale versions, a puff pastry rim is added and it is baked in a moderate oven for no more than three quarters of an hour. You can add a variety of preserved fruits and sugar as garnishes.

Finally, Hannah Glasse, the famous cookery writer of the eighteenth century provides a version in her The Art of Cookery from 1747.

“To Make a Marrow Pudding,” Glasse has the reader take three Naples biscuits, a quart of cream, nutmeg, ten egg yolks with five whites - all beaten. She says to add some sugar to taste and then mix them all together. This is cooked over a fire in a pan with some butter until it thickens. To this is added a quarter pound of currants and the mixture is left to sit overnight. You line a dish with pastry and pour the mixture in, put long pieces of marrow on top and bake for a half hour.

This entry started with my attempt to bring these recipes together while hoping to keep the basic spirit of the period dishes. So far, next week, it looks like I will be doing something somewhat simpler with venison.