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Baked Rhubarb Pudding
2 cupfuls flour 1/2 teaspoonful salt 2 bundles rhubarb 1/2 cupful Crisco 1 lemon 6 tablespoonfuls brown sugar Water 1/2 cupful granulated sugar Put granulated sugar into small saucepan over fire, and when brown, coat inside of plain pudding mold with it. Sift, flour, salt, and baking powder together, rub Crisco finely into it, then mix whole to a smooth paste with cold water. Turn out on a floured board, cut off one-third of it, and put one side for the lid. Roll out remainder until twice the circumference of the top of the mold, then drop gently into mold, pressing evenly against sides. Fill center with rhubarb, cut in pieces an inch long. Add grated rind and strained juice of half of the lemon, brown sugar and 3 tablespoonfuls water. Roll out pastry that was put on one side, wet edges of it, lay it on top. Cover with a piece of greased paper, and bake in moderate oven one hour. Turn out and serve with hot milk.
A baked pastry-lined pudding in the English tradition, given a caramel-coated mould and made with the then-new vegetable shortening. Two things in the ingredient list need sorting out before you start.
- The missing baking powderThe method says to sift flour, salt and baking powder together, but no baking powder appears in the list. Something in the range of 2 teaspoons for the 2 cups of flour would suit; the crust is meant to be short and slightly risen rather than flaky.
- "2 bundles rhubarb"The size of a market bundle is not recorded here; something on the order of 1 1/2 to 2 lb of trimmed stalks will fill the mould. Use only the stalks. Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid in quantity and are never eaten.
- CriscoThe book was written to promote it, and it is still sold. Any solid vegetable shortening works, or the same weight of chilled butter or lard, rubbed in until the mixture looks like coarse meal.
- Moderate ovenAround 350-375F. An hour at that heat suits a filled pudding mould; the crust should be firm and pale gold and the rhubarb collapsed.
- The caramel liningMelt the 1/2 cup granulated sugar dry over medium heat until it is a deep amber, then tilt it around the warm mould at once. It sets hard in seconds and burns skin badly on contact, so work with the mould on a folded towel, not in your hand.
- Lining the mouldThe recipe says "twice the circumference" of the mould's mouth, which is generally taken to mean twice across, giving enough to press up the sides without stretching; stretching is what causes leaks. Seal the lid to the wetted edge firmly; the fruit throws off a lot of juice.
- Greased paper, not a lidThe paper keeps the top crust from colouring too fast in the dry oven heat. Buttered parchment or foil laid loosely on top does the same job.
- Turning outLet it stand five minutes off the heat so the caramel loosens, then invert onto a rimmed dish. The caramel becomes a thin sauce as it meets the hot fruit juice.
- Yield and servingRoughly six servings. "Hot milk" means exactly that, poured over at the table; warm pouring cream or a thin custard is the modern equivalent.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and published by Procter & Gamble to sell Crisco, which came on the market in 1911; the recipes lean heavily on the shortening, and this pudding is a straightforward substitution of it for the beef suet or lard that would have bound an English pastry pudding crust. The dish itself is older than the book by a long way: a plain paste lining a mould, filled with fruit and cooked until the crust sets around the juice, is the standard form of the British suet or short-crust pudding, usually steamed rather than baked. Rhubarb was the natural spring filling for it, cheap and early, and it is generally said to have moved from the physic garden to the kitchen in Britain only in the late eighteenth century, once sugar was affordable enough to make the stalks palatable. The caramel-lined mould is the one flourish here, giving the turned-out pudding a glaze.