Fig Pudding
1 cup chopped washed figs. 1/3 cup milk. 1/3 cup Cottolene. 3 eggs well beaten. 2½ cups soft bread crumbs. 1 cup soft brown sugar. 1 teaspoon salt.
Grated rind of half an orange.
PROCESS: Cover bread crumbs with milk. Mix Cottolene with figs. To the milk mixture add eggs, sugar, salt and orange rind; combine mixtures. Beat thoroughly and turn into a well-greased tube mold; cover and steam three hours. Serve with Brandy or Vanilla Sauce.
A steamed pudding of the plain, thrifty sort: bread crumbs instead of flour, dried figs instead of raisins. Nothing here is difficult, but the water bath needs watching for three hours.
- CottoleneA branded shortening built on cottonseed oil (blended with a proportion of beef stearin), discontinued long ago. Use 1/2 cup of butter or vegetable shortening, softened, not melted.
- The figsAlmost certainly dried figs rather than fresh. "Washed" presumably means rinsed before chopping; snip off the hard stems. If they are very dry, a short soak in hot water, well drained, keeps them from drawing moisture out of the pudding.
- Soft bread crumbsTorn from the crumb of a day-old loaf, loosely packed — not dry packaged crumbs, which would absorb far more milk and give a dense pudding.
- The saltA full teaspoon is on the high side for a modern palate in a sweet pudding. Half a teaspoon is closer to current practice, unless you are using unsalted butter for the fat.
- Steaming setupGrease the tube mold, fill it no more than two-thirds, and cover tightly with a lid or foil tied down so condensation cannot drip in. Set it on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water reaching halfway up the mold, and top up with boiling water as it evaporates — running dry is the one thing that ruins it.
- Three hours is realIt is not padding. The pudding sets slowly and gently; the long steam is what makes the crumb moist rather than rubbery. A skewer should come out clean and the pudding should pull slightly from the sides.
- Yield and servingProbably enough for six to eight; the recipe gives no yield. Let it rest 10 minutes before unmolding, and serve warm — a steamed pudding turns heavy and close-textured as it cools. If the sauce is a hard sauce or brandy sauce made with raw egg, use pasteurized eggs.
52 Sunday Dinners (1913) was written by Elizabeth O. Hiller and published by the N. K. Fairbank Company to promote Cottolene, its shortening, which is why the brand name appears in the ingredient list of most recipes in the book rather than a generic "lard" or "butter." The pudding itself belongs to the older British tradition of steamed puddings, where a boiled or steamed batter bound with bread crumbs and suet stood in for an oven-baked cake — a sensible arrangement in a kitchen with one fire and a crowded range. Figs reached American kitchens dried and pressed from Mediterranean shippers and later from California. Putting Cottolene in place of suet was the commercial argument of the book, though Cottolene was itself a blend of cottonseed oil with beef stearin rather than a wholly vegetable fat.