On June 26, 1861, Charles Wakeley 1854, MA1857 gathered the University of Wisconsin’s 40 alumni for a dinner the evening of the 1861 commencement ceremony. It was a show of support for a fledgling university enduring financial and administrative hardship and the early days of the Civil War.
It also marked the birth of the Wisconsin Alumni Association.
For 165 years, WAA has carried on the mission that Wakeley and his fellow alumni started that day: to foster a community that would support the UW and celebrate its triumphs — to create a place where Badgers belong. Today, that community consists of 500,000 living alumni spread across the world, 31,000 of whom are dedicated members of WAA. To that, we propose a toast — of University Pudding.
We couldn’t track down the official menu for WAA’s inaugural gathering, but cookbooks and local hotel menus of the era hint at what might have been on offer at a formal gathering on a late June evening in Wisconsin in 1861. Meat, game, and offal were plentiful; winter’s root-cellar stock accompanied the fresh vegetables just coming into season; pickled and preserved bits abounded; and dessert leaned heavily into sugary cakes and eggy custards, with the occasional sprinkle of fresh, but often preserved, fruit.
University Pudding combines two of those components — custard and preserved fruit — which is perhaps the least important among the reasons we chose it for our celebratory dessert course. The most is, admittedly, its festive name. In close second is its author, Sarah Fairchild Dean Conover.
Conover was the eldest child of Jairus C. Fairchild, Wisconsin’s first state treasurer and Madison’s first mayor. She was also older sister to Lucius Fairchild, the 10th governor of Wisconsin, and Charles Fairchild 1857, MA1861, the youngest member of the UW’s first class in 1849. In 1882, she married former UW professor and regent Obadiah Conover, father of UW professor and architect Allan Conover 1874, who designed the Red Gym and Science Hall.
In short, Conover’s UW roots run deep. Deep enough to be at that 1861 gathering? Alas, probably not. At the time, Conover was still married to her first husband, Madison alderman E. B. Dean, who was unaffiliated with the UW. Furthermore, her brother Charles, the family’s only UW alum thus far, had already set out with the first Wisconsin regiment to fight in the Civil War (which does, admittedly, challenge the notion that every UW alum of the time was in attendance at Wakeley’s event).
Still, Madison’s 19th-century social events were often town-and-gown affairs that reflected the interwoven city and university communities, and, according to Louise Phelps Kellogg’s The Fairchild Papers, “the Fairchild family was always intimate with many of the faculty and the presidents” of the UW. Mrs. Conover may not have been at Wakeley’s dinner on June 26, but she was almost certainly known to its attendants.
Conover’s recipe for University Pudding appears in Lynne Watrous Hamel’s 1974 book, A Taste of Old Madison: Collected Recipes and Nostalgia from Madison’s Early Days.
Instructions
“Make a custard of two cups milk, three-fourths cup sugar, the yolks of six eggs, and one-eighth teaspoon of salt. Strain, cool, and add two and one-half cups cream, and freeze to a mush. Add two tablespoons rum, one tablespoon brandy, and one cup of mixed fruit that has been soaked in brandy to cover for 12 hours (use glace cherries, sultana raisins, sliced citron, and candied pineapple). Finish freezing. Serve in small beer jugs and garnish with sweetened whipped cream.”
Review
Don’t let the name fool you: University Pudding is a milkshake, one studded with brandy-soaked, preserved fruit. Akin to today’s bubble or boba tea? Not even a little. A distant relative of the Brandy Alexander or the Pink Squirrel? More likely.
I’ll admit that, during most of the assembly, I was skeptical of this recipe. At no point while reading it or preparing the “custard” base did I know what my finished product was supposed to look or taste like. This was largely because my first instruction was to prepare a custard with only milk, sugar, egg yolks, and salt. Custard typically requires a thickening agent like corn starch, and I wondered how long I’d have to stand at my stove, stirring. It was as my arm started to ache that I remembered that this recipe was listed under the book’s “Spirits” section among wines and shrubs and punches. I was preparing a sippable beverage, not a spoonable, pudding-like dessert. I stopped stirring and strained the custard.
From there, the path to University Pudding was as clear as the beer jugs I intended to serve it in, though I still eyed the preserved fruit warily. Have you ever craved a drinkable fruitcake in the late June heat? Me neither, but into the base — frozen to a “mush” — the fruit went, along with the brandy and rum that would prevent the formation of a University Pudding–Pop.
The final consistency was one I knew well: that of a hand-spun milkshake — no machine required! University Pudding was even rather fetching, dressed up with whipped cream and a cherry (an embellishment I thought inoffensive to the original recipe) and served in thick-walled beer mugs that caught the low light of a summer evening’s dessert course. The drink was sweet, smooth, and familiar, and while I won’t be using the leftover preserved-fruit mixture for future milkshakes, I understood its place in this one.
I can’t say with any certainty that University Pudding was served at the first gathering of the Wisconsin Alumni Association, but its heft in the hand and handsome presentation would have made for a festive toast, indeed.
