Bachelor’s Pudding – CWA 1965 Cookbook

It’s time for another recipe from 1965! Continuing our vintage cooking experiment, this time I chose the recipe from January 31 – Bachelor’s Pudding – and happily, I think it was a big success! Here’s the recipe:

There’s quite a lot crammed into only six lines…

1 egg, the weight of an egg in butter, sugar and flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, a little grated lemon rind, 1 tablespoon jam, short pastry. Line a shallow dish with the pastry, spread the jam on the bottom, beat butter and sugar to a cream, add egg, lemon rind, flour and baking powder. Pour this over the jam, bake for half an hour. Dust with sugar. Serve with custard.

First up, what even is “bachelor’s pudding”? Of course, “pudding” is used here in the British sense, meaning simply “dessert.” If you search for “bachelor’s pudding” online, you’ll find lots of old recipes that have currants and breadcrumbs in them… and this recipe has neither. I liked this explanation the best: “Nobody knows for sure how Bachelor’s Pudding got its name but it is suggested that the frugal ingredients lend themselves to single men on minimal means.”

I wasn’t sure whether a CWA wife in 1965 would be making her own short pastry or not. The recipe just seems to assume that you have some. I decided to keep things simple and go with a sheet of frozen shortcrust. I also went with a carton of custard. For the jam, I went with good ol’ Cottee’s apricot, which I figured would have been easily available at the time.

I started by cracking my egg and weighing it, and it ended up around 55g. So I put that much butter and sugar in my mixing bowl and creamed them together.

Then I added the egg, lemon rind, flour, and baking powder. It came together into a creamy batter.

Rodd and I debated on what an appropriate “shallow dish” would be and decided to go with a simple small metal pie plate. I buttered it (not in the recipe but I figured it couldn’t hurt) and then lined it with my thawed sheet of shortcrust, sealing the cracks as best I could. Then I spooned in some apricot jam (probably a little more than the recipe called for) and spread it around.

The batter certainly wasn’t pourable, so instead I spooned it on and then smoothed out as best I could. I’m glad I didn’t go with a bigger dish, as it didn’t even come close to filling it.

The recipe doesn’t give any guidance as to baking temperature, so I figured I’d go with 180C / 350F and just keep an eye on it.

It actually worked really well! The batter puffed up a bit and the pastry shrank, so I think the proportions actually worked. By 30 minutes it was nice and golden so I pulled it out to cool.

I sprinkled it with some sifted powdered sugar and then cut it into pieces. It came out cleanly, and the bottom wasn’t too soggy despite the lack of blind baking. You can clearly see the jam layer. I was quite impressed!

And here it is, served with custard for afternoon tea! It was quite tasty – sweet but not overly so. I think I could’ve gone with more lemon zest as it got lost a bit.

We debated on how you’d modernise this. Obviously you could make your own pastry and custard, which would certainly zhush it up. I think you could also experiment with the jam layer and try a few different things in there. (Kaya pudding?!) But overall this one was pretty good as is, even with the shortcuts I took and the vagueness of the recipe. Big thumbs up!