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Graham Plum Pudding
1½ cups Graham flour. 1 cup N. O. molasses. 1/2 cup milk. 1 cup seeded raisins. 1 teaspoon cinnamon.
First Sunday 1/4 teaspoon cloves. 2 eggs well beaten. ½ teaspoon soda. ½ teaspoon salt. 2 tablespoons Cottolene.
PROCESS: Sift flour, spices, salt and soda; add raisins, molasses, milk and eggs, beat thoroughly, then add melted Cottolene. Turn into well-greased brown bread molds and steam four hours. Serve with
A steamed molasses pudding of the plainest sort, leavened with soda rather than suet and yeast. The method is forgiving; the vessels and the fat need translation.
- Graham flourWhole-wheat flour, coarsely milled and unbolted. Modern stone-ground whole wheat is the closest match; ordinary whole-wheat flour works but gives a finer, denser crumb.
- N. O. molassesNew Orleans molasses, meaning ordinary unsulphured cane molasses, not blackstrap. Blackstrap will make the pudding bitter.
- CottoleneA cottonseed-oil-and-beef-suet shortening sold by the N. K. Fairbank Company and heavily advertised in books of this period. Substitute melted butter or a neutral solid shortening, measure for measure.
- Flour quantityThe printed page was checked: the flour measure is 1½ cups of Graham flour, as our text now gives. With a full cup of molasses and half a cup of milk, the batter should be thick enough to drop from a spoon.
- Brown bread moldsStraight-sided tin cylinders with lids, the same used for Boston brown bread. One-pound coffee tins or 2-cup pudding basins work; grease well, fill two-thirds full, and cover tightly with greased foil tied down so condensation cannot get in.
- SteamingSet the molds on a rack in a deep pot, add boiling water to come halfway up, cover, and keep at a bare simmer. Top up with boiling water as it drops -- letting the pot run dry is the one failure that cannot be recovered.
- Four hoursThe recipe gives four hours for its brown bread molds. In smaller molds a shorter steaming may serve; test with a skewer, which should come out clean, and the pudding should spring back.
- ServingThe line breaks off before naming the sauce. A hard sauce of creamed butter and powdered sugar, or a thin vanilla or lemon sauce, is the usual accompaniment for such puddings.
52 Sunday Dinners was issued as promotional cookery for Cottolene, and the shortening's appearance in nearly every recipe is the point of the book rather than a coincidence: cottonseed oil was a cheap manufactured fat whose makers spent freely to persuade cooks it could replace lard and butter. The pudding itself belongs to the American steamed-pudding tradition that runs through Boston brown bread and Indian pudding -- molasses for sweetening, whole grain for body, soda for lift, and long steaming in a covered tin. It is called a plum pudding by courtesy, as English plum pudding meant raisins and suet and long aging; this one is raisins, four hours, and no aging at all.