Home › A Calendar of Dinners › Eve's Pudding
Eve's Pudding
Mix together in a basin, 1 cup seeded raisins, 3 tablespoons Crisco, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 2 cups crumbs, 1 cup currants, 8 chopped apples, 1 teaspoon each cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, 1/4 cup milk, and 4 well beaten eggs. Pour into Criscoed mold, cover with greased paper and steam 2 hours. Serve with hot milk.
A steamed suet-less pudding from a Crisco-sponsored cookbook, thickened with bread and apples rather than flour. The method is straightforward; most of what needs translating is the vessel and the fruit quantity.
- CriscoAny solid vegetable shortening works, as does softened butter, which gives better flavour. "Criscoed mold" simply means a well-greased pudding basin.
- CrumbsSoft fresh breadcrumbs, not dried or toasted ones. Two cups of fresh crumbs is roughly four slices of white bread torn and pulsed; dry crumbs would absorb far more liquid and give a dense, sandy pudding.
- Eight applesA vague measure; aim for about 2 lb peeled and cored weight, chopped fine. A firm cooking apple such as Bramley or Granny Smith holds up best.
- No sugarThe recipe relies entirely on raisins, currants and apples for sweetness, which will read as barely sweet to a modern palate. That is authentic to the style rather than an omission.
- SpicingA teaspoon each of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg is a lot of clove; halving the cloves suits modern taste better.
- The mold and the steamFill a heatproof basin about two-thirds full, cover with greased parchment and a layer of foil, pleated to allow expansion, and tie down. Stand it on a trivet or folded cloth in a pot with boiling water reaching halfway up the sides, lid on, at a bare simmer.
- Two hours means two hoursCheck the water level every 30 to 40 minutes and top up with boiling water. If the pot boils dry the basin cracks and the pudding scorches. It is done when a skewer to the centre comes out clean and the top springs back.
- Serving"Hot milk" was the plain household finish; warmed cream, a thin custard or a hard sauce all suit it better. The pudding serves eight to ten and reheats by steaming for 30 minutes.
Eve's pudding is an English apple pudding whose name is a joke about the fruit in Eden, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cookbooks often printed it as a rhyming riddle listing six eggs, six ounces of bread, six ounces of currants and half a dozen apples. This version comes from a cookbook produced to promote Crisco. Procter and Gamble launched Crisco in 1911 and commissioned recipe collections to teach cooks that it could stand in for lard, butter and suet anywhere they appeared.