Georges and Cecile Buseyne Lalleman
A brief look back at a favourite dessert in Aarschot since the 1950s: ‘bodding’. It is a plum pudding with rum that was prepared weekly by the pastry cook Buseyne for his pastry shop ‘Delecta’. After his marriage in 1951, Georges founded ‘Delecta’ with his wife Cecile (1926-2010) in the Tiensestraat in Leuven. In 1955 the couple moved to Aarschot, where they took over a pastry shop on the Grote Markt, and after three years the whole building was in their name. The people of Aarschot soon grew fond of the rich and nourishing bodding, which was sold in slices of about 1.5 cm.
preparation:
Take a rectangular loaf tin. Grease it completely with butter. Then sprinkle crystal sugar evenly over the butter and shake out the excess sugar. Once you have an even layer of butter and sugar in the tin, take about ten bread rolls that are not too fresh. Cut the rolls into strips of about 1 cm. Line the bottom and sides of the tin with them. Build up neatly like Lego bricks, leaving no gaps.
Then heat a litre of milk with 150 g sugar and a good water glass of rum. Stir regularly until it boils.
Meanwhile, keep filling the tin with the remaining pieces of roll, which do not need to be neat or even, but press them down well, filling up to the top… .
Pour the milk with sugar and rum over it until everything is well soaked, but not too much milk.
Press down the whole filling once more. If necessary, add a few more pieces until everything forms a firm whole up to the top.
Take a bowl, boil water, and place the tin ‘au bain-marie’ in the oven for 1 h 50 at 200 °C.
Then let the tin cool and take it out of the water. When cooled, turn the tin upside down onto a dish. This is how the bodding comes out… .
(1962) Eric Buseyne, the son of Cecile and Georges
