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Yankee Plum Pudding
2/3 cup Cottolene. 1 cup N. O. molasses. 3 cups flour. 1½ teaspoons soda. 1 teaspoon cinnamon. 1/2 teaspoon cloves. 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg. 1/2 teaspoon salt. 1 cup sweet milk. 1 cup seeded shredded raisins. 1 cup English Walnut meats broken in pieces.
PROCESS: Cream Cottolene, add molasses; mix and sift flour, soda, spices and salt; add alternately with milk, reserving enough flour to dredge raisins and nut meats; mix well and turn in buttered molds. Steam three hours. Serve with Brandy or Vanilla Sauce. (For recipe Vanilla Sauce see Page 136.)
A steamed molasses pudding rather than a true British plum pudding — no suet, no brandied fruit, and no plums. It is forgiving, but the details of the fat, the molasses and the steaming vessel all matter.
- CottoleneA branded shortening based on cottonseed oil (blended with beef suet), sold by the company that sponsored this book; it has not been made for decades. Use 2/3 cup solid vegetable shortening for the closest texture, or the same amount of softened butter for better flavor and a slightly firmer crumb.
- N. O. molassesNew Orleans molasses meant a light, good-quality table molasses rather than the last, bitter boiling. Modern unsulphured molasses is the right substitute; blackstrap is far more bitter and will dominate the spices.
- The soda measurementThe printed page gives 1½ teaspoons soda, which is what our text now reads. That amount suits a cup of molasses and three cups of flour; half a teaspoon would give a dense pudding.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh whole milk, specified to distinguish it from soured milk, which period recipes also called for and which would have reacted differently with the soda.
- The moldsFill buttered molds no more than two-thirds full and cover them tightly with a lid or with buttered foil tied down, or condensing steam will waterlog the top. Set them on a rack in a covered pot with water reaching halfway up the sides.
- Three hours of steamingThat is realistic for one large mold; individual cup-sized molds are done in about an hour. Keep the water at a bare simmer and top it up with boiling water so the pot never runs dry. The pudding is done when a skewer comes out clean and the surface springs back.
- Dredging the fruit and nutsThe reserved flour keeps the raisins and walnuts suspended instead of sinking into the bottom of the mold. Do not skip it, and do not simply add the extra flour to the batter.
- Yield and servingEnough for eight to ten. Unmold while hot, and serve with the vanilla sauce from the book or a hard sauce; steamed puddings reheat well in the mold over simmering water.
Calling this "Yankee" plum pudding signals what it leaves out: the English Christmas pudding built on beef suet, candied peel and brandy-soaked fruit, aged for weeks, becomes here a quick New England molasses-and-walnut pudding made with shortening, milk and raisins from the everyday pantry. "Plum" had long since stopped meaning plums in English cookery — by the eighteenth century it referred to raisins and dried fruit generally, which is why plum pudding and plum cake contain none. The Cottolene in the ingredient list places the recipe firmly: 52 Sunday Dinners was one of the promotional cookbooks issued around the branded cottonseed shortenings that competed with lard and butter in American kitchens in the early twentieth century, and such books routinely wrote the sponsor's product into every formula where a fat was called for. The three-hour steam, meanwhile, belongs to an older habit still: puddings cooked in a covered mold over water were a way to get a rich dessert out of a stovetop without tying up the oven.