Yeomanry Pudding Recipe

Ask most people what a “Yeomanry Pudding” is and you will get a blank look, which is a shame, because it is one of the more charming survivors of English regional cookery — a two-crust pastry pie from Staffordshire, filled with a layer of raspberry jam under a rich almond custard, baked until the top goes gold. It has nothing to do with suet or steaming, whatever the name suggests to modern ears: this is closer to a Bakewell tart wearing a pastry lid.

The dish takes its name from the Staffordshire Yeomanry, a volunteer cavalry regiment, and the earliest dated version of the recipe traces to 1838, when it was a speciality of the Swan Hotel in Stafford. It resurfaced in the twentieth century in Florence White’s 1932 cookery survey Good Things in England, and again on television, in Dorothy Sleightholme’s Farmhouse Kitchen for Yorkshire Television — where the recipe was credited to a Miss P. M. Cherry of Penkridge, a village a few miles from Stafford itself. Nobody, including the food historians who have gone looking, seems entirely sure why a cavalry regiment gave its name to a jam and almond pie. It is worth reviving all the same.

The classic English version is simple enough for a Sunday afternoon and uses nothing you will not already have in the cupboard — ground almonds keep for months in the freezer, and a spoonful of jam from the back of the fridge is exactly what this recipe is for. No need to buy anything special.

Yeomanry Pudding

A two-crust pastry pie from Staffordshire with a jam base and a rich almond custard filling, baked until golden.

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Prep Time 20 minutes mins

Cook Time 40 minutes mins

Course Dessert

Cuisine English

Servings 6 servings

Ingredients

  

• 225 g shortcrust pastry shop-bought or homemade, enough for a base and lid
• 100 g cold butter cut into small pieces
• 100 g caster sugar
• 75 g raspberry jam
• 50 g ground almonds
• 4 drops almond essence
• 4 egg yolks
• 3 egg whites

Instructions

 

• Preheat the oven to 180C (350F/Gas 4).
• Roll out two-thirds of the pastry and use it to line a pie plate or shallow pie dish. Spoon the jam over the base and spread it out evenly.
• Melt the butter and pour it over the sugar, egg yolks, egg whites, ground almonds and almond essence. Beat well until smooth, then pour the mixture over the jam and level it off.
• Roll out the remaining pastry into a circle and lay it over the filling. Press the edges together to seal, crimping if you like, and cut two or three slits in the top to let the steam out.
• Bake for about 40 minutes, until the pastry is golden and the filling is set. Cool on a wire rack for 20-25 minutes before cutting.

Tips and variations

• Raspberry jam is traditional, but a good apricot or blackcurrant jam works just as well if that is what is open.
• Ground almonds go rancid faster than you would think in a warm kitchen — keep the packet in the freezer and there is no need to buy a fresh one for a single pie.
• The almond essence is easy to overdo. A few drops is plenty; more and it starts to taste of marzipan rather than complementing it.
• Serve warm with pouring cream, or at room temperature with tea, which is closer to how a Staffordshire farmhouse would have eaten it.

If you enjoy tracking down a recipe with a history attached, Mrs Robin’s fruit cake — another boiled cake from the same era of home baking — is worth a look too: Mrs Robin’s Fruit Cake (Boiled Cake) recipe.