Bakewell puddings are actually pies with a soft, creamy filling with a soft brown crust on top. They are made in Derbyshire, England.
You make a deep-yellow coloured puff pastry from a fat such as butter or half butter and hard lard with twice as much flour, a dash of salt, and enough water to hold it all together. You line a pie tin with it, spread some apricot jam over it and sprinkle either candied peel or candied fruit over the jam.
You then pour into the pie shell a filling made with eggs, sugar, butter, vanilla, brandy and ground almonds, and bake the pie.
It is best eaten warm, served with custard or cream.
Bakewell Puddings are different from Bakewell Tarts. For the differentiation, see the entry on Bakewell Tarts.
History Notes
Bakewell is a market town on the Wye River, with a stone bridge dating from the 1300s.
Bakewell Puddings were first made reputedly by accident in 1869 at the White Horse Inn (now the Rutland Arms) when a cook made a mistake in the kitchen. The Inn was built in the late 1600s. In Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Elizabeth Bennet stops at the White Horse Inn to meet the Darcys.
Eliza Action, in Modern Cookery 1845, listed Bakewell Pudding under Baked Puddings. Her recipe had no crust.
Mrs Beeton’s version of Bakewell pudding in 1861 had a puff-pastry crust.
Many places in Bakewell now claim to have the original recipe for Bakewell Pudding.
In the summer of 2008, Bakewell Pudding makers began applying to the European Union for PGI (“Protected Geographical Indication”) status for the pudding, to ensure that only Bakewells made in Bakewell, Derbyshire, could be called Bakewells. The initiative was headed by Jemma Pheasey, owner of the Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop. The application ran into difficulty because “Bakewell tart is listed in the Official Journal of the European Community as a ‘generic’ name and therefore may not be registered under 2081/92.” [1]
Literature & Lore
BAKEWELL PUDDlNG This pudding is famous not only in Derbyshire but in several of our northern counties where it is usually served on all holiday occasions. Line a shallow tart dish with quite an inch deep layer of several kinds of good preserve mixed together and intermingle with them from two to three ounces of candied citron or orange rind. Beat well the yolks of ten eggs and add to them gradually half a pound of sifted sugar when they are well mixed pour in by degrees half a pound of good clarified butter and a little ratifia or any other flavour that may be preferred; fill the dish two thirds full with this mixture and bake the pudding for nearly an hour in a moderate oven. Half the quantity will be sufficient for a small dish
Mixed preserves, 1 ½ to to 2 lbs.; yolks of eggs, 10; sugar, ½ lb.; butter, ½ lb.; ratifia, lemon-brandy or other flavouring to the taste: baked, moderate oven, ¾ to 1 hour.
Obs. — This is a rich and expensive but not a very refined pudding. A variation of it known in the south as an Alderman’s Pudding is we think superior to it. lt is made without the candied peel and with a layer of apricot jam only, six ounces of butter, six of sugar, the yolks of six, and the whites of two eggs.
— Acton, Eliza. Modern cookery, in all its branches. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans. Second Edition, 1845. Chapter 18, Page 392.
Sources
[1] Angela Tregear, Sharron Kuznesof and Andrew Moxey. Policy initiatives for regional foods: some
insights from consumer research. Elsevier Science Ltd. Food Policy, Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 383–394, 1998. Page 390, footnote.
Bakewell Pudding : http://www.buxtonspabakery.co.uk/downloads/BakewellPud_Info.pdf. Retrieved November 2009.
Fort, Matthew. Around Britain with a fork: Matthew Fort on Bakewell’s puddings, tarts and other culinary arts. Manchester: The Guardian. 28 April 2008.