Home › October › Steamed Peach Pudding
Steamed Peach Pudding
Fill a two-quart mold two-thirds full of pared, stoned and sliced peaches. Butter the inside edge of mold, also the inside of Cover with a soft dough made by mixing and sifting two cups flour, one-half teaspoon salt and four teaspoons baking powder. Rub one tablespoon Cottolene into flour mixture with tips of fingers, add sufficient rich milk to make a soft dough. Sprinkle peaches with one-half cup sugar, one-fourth teaspoon salt and dot over with one tablespoon butter cut in small bits. Spread soft dough over all, cover closely and steam one hour. Serve at once with
A steamed cobbler in a mold: biscuit dough laid over sugared peaches and cooked in a covered vessel over simmering water. The dough is the part that goes wrong, so handle it as little as possible.
- CottoleneA branded cottonseed-oil shortening sold by the N. K. Fairbank Company, long discontinued. Use an equal amount of vegetable shortening, lard, or cold butter.
- The moldA two-quart pudding mold or steamed-pudding basin with a clamping lid. A two-quart metal bowl or heatproof pudding basin works if you tie buttered parchment and foil over the top tightly enough that condensation cannot drip in.
- Setting up the steamStand the mold on a rack in a deep pot, add boiling water to come halfway up the sides, cover, and keep it at a steady simmer. Top up with boiling water as it evaporates so the pot never runs dry in the hour.
- Handling the doughFour teaspoons baking powder to two cups flour is a heavily leavened biscuit dough, and with only a tablespoon of fat it is a lean one. Stir the milk in only until it holds together, then pat it out and lay it over the fruit; kneading develops gluten and gives a tough, rubbery crust under steam.
- Rich milkPeriod shorthand for whole milk, often with a little cream. Whole milk is fine; roughly three-quarters of a cup makes a soft dough, added a little at a time.
- Buttering the moldButter the inside edge and the underside of the lid as directed. Steam condenses on the cover and the dough rises to meet it, and unbuttered metal will tear the crust when you open it.
- PeachesFreestone peaches at full ripeness need no more than the half cup of sugar given; firmer or less ripe fruit may want a little more.
- ServingServe hot, straight from the mold or turned out onto a deep dish. The recipe breaks off before naming the accompaniment; hard sauce, thin cream, or a plain vanilla custard sauce are all period-appropriate finishes. A two-quart mold should serve about six.
52 Sunday Dinners was a promotional cookbook issued in the 1910s by the N. K. Fairbank Company to advertise Cottolene, its shortening of cottonseed oil cut with beef suet, which is why the fat is named by brand here rather than simply called shortening. Cottonseed oil was a byproduct of the Southern cotton crop, and manufacturers spent the turn of the century persuading American cooks to accept it in place of lard and butter, largely through free recipe booklets of this kind. The pudding itself is older than the advertising: steaming a biscuit crust over fruit in a closed mold predates reliable home ovens, and the technique came to American kitchens by way of English suet and batter puddings.