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Chocolate Pudding
Crisco a mold or basin. Beat 3 tablespoons Crisco and 2 tablespoons sugar to a cream, then beat in 3 yolks of eggs. Dissolve 1 1/2 teacups grated chocolate smoothly in 1 cup milk, add it to Crisco mixture, with 2 cups cake-crumbs, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and whites of eggs stiffly beaten. Fold the whites in gently. Pour into prepared mold, cover with Criscoed paper and steam for 2 hour. Turn out and serve with white sauce. This mixture may be place in a Criscoed pudding dish and baked in a moderate oven.
A steamed sponge-crumb pudding from one of the Crisco promotional cookbooks, where the shortening is named in every step as a matter of advertising. The important thing to get right is the mold: it needs room to rise and a lid that keeps steam out of the batter.
- CriscoPlain vegetable shortening, as it was when the book appeared, though the formula has since been changed to cut the partially hydrogenated fat. Butter works in the same quantities and tastes better; use it for greasing the mold and the paper as well.
- Teacup vs. cupThe recipe uses both terms in the same sentence. A teacup is conventionally reckoned at about 3/4 cup, which would make 1 1/2 teacups of grated chocolate roughly 1 1/8 cups, against a full 8-ounce cup of milk.
- Grated chocolateBlock chocolate grated on a fine grater, most likely unsweetened baking chocolate. Cocoa powder is not a substitute here, as it will not dissolve smoothly in warm milk in this proportion. With only 2 tablespoons of sugar in the whole pudding, expect something distinctly bitter unless you use a sweetened dark chocolate or add sugar to taste.
- Cake crumbsStale plain cake, not fresh; crumbed fine, lightly packed. Two cups is about 4 ounces. Sponge or a plain butter cake gives the intended texture. Dry breadcrumbs will work but make a coarser, less tender pudding.
- Filling the moldFill no more than two-thirds full so the pudding can rise. The Criscoed paper should be tied down over the rim, greased side in; a pleat across the top allows for expansion.
- Steaming"2 hour" is a typo for two hours. Set the mold on a rack in a pot, add boiling water to come halfway up, cover, and keep the water at a bare simmer, topping up as needed. If it boils dry the pudding scorches.
- The baked versionA moderate oven is usually reckoned at roughly 350-375F. Baked in a shallow dish it should be set in something like 40 to 50 minutes, and it becomes a firmer, drier pudding rather than the moist steamed one.
- White sauceIn a pudding chapter this means the sweet sauce: milk thickened with a little flour and butter, sugared and flavored with vanilla, not a savory bechamel.
- YieldProbably about six servings; the batter suits a mold of roughly 1 1/2 quarts filled two-thirds full. Turn it out while still warm rather than letting it cool in the mold.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, which the company had introduced in 1911, and the relentless verbing of the brand name here ("Crisco a mold," "Criscoed paper") is the price of the free recipe book. The pudding itself is much older than its shortening: a steamed crumb pudding in a covered mold descends directly from the British boiled puddings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which were cooked in a floured cloth before molds and basins became common. Its real subject is thrift, since it exists to use up stale cake.