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Steamed Snow Balls (For recipe see page cup)
(For recipe, see page 168.) 2/3 cup Cottolene. 2 cups sugar. 3 eggs. 3 cups flour.
This is only the ingredient panel; the method lived on page 168 of the original book, which means the proportions here are incomplete on their face. Read the notes before you shop.
- What is missingThere is no liquid and no leavening listed, and a steamed cake batter needs both. The method on page 168 presumably supplied a liquid, a leavener and flavouring, but none of that can be reconstructed from this panel. Treat it as a shopping list rather than a formula.
- CottoleneA branded shortening of cottonseed oil stiffened with beef suet, sold by the N. K. Fairbank Company and long since discontinued. Substitute the same volume of vegetable shortening, or use butter if you want flavour, accepting a slightly softer crumb.
- Creaming orderTwo cups sugar to two-thirds cup fat is a sugar-heavy ratio. Cream the fat and sugar thoroughly and beat the eggs in one at a time; with no leavening given on this page, whatever air the creaming provides will count.
- "Snow balls" means the mould, not the colour"Snow balls" -- These read as individual steamed puddings cooked in small round cups or tin moulds, turned out and often masked with a white sauce or dusted heavily with sugar; whether the name points to the round shape or to the white coating is not settled. Fill greased moulds no more than two-thirds full.
- Steaming, not bakingSet the covered moulds on a rack in a deep pan with simmering water reaching halfway up, keep the lid on, and hold a steady low boil. Individual moulds take 40 to 50 minutes; test with a skewer. Top up with boiling water so the pan never runs dry.
- YieldWith the method missing, the yield can only be estimated: a batter on this scale would fill a dozen or more small moulds, or one large mould that would need substantially longer.
- SauceSteamed puddings of this kind were normally served sauced. A hard sauce, a thin vanilla custard, or a lemon sauce all suit.
52 Sunday Dinners was written by Elizabeth O. Hiller and published by the N. K. Fairbank Company, the makers of Cottolene, which is why that one branded shortening turns up in nearly every recipe in the book: it is a menu planner and an advertisement at the same time. Steamed puddings like these were a staple of the Sunday table well into the twentieth century, partly because a covered pot on the back of the range needed no oven space and no watching while the roast took priority. The "snow ball" name appears in British and American cookery books through the nineteenth century, sometimes with an apple hidden in the middle.