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For Pudding (Cupful brown sugar cupful)
1 cupful brown sugar 1 cupful grated carrots 1 cupful grated raw potatoes 3/4 cupful Crisco 1 cupful seeded raisins 1/2 cupful breadcrumbs 1/2 cupful milk 1 1/2 cupfuls flour 1 teaspoonful salt 1 teaspoonful baking powder 1 teaspoonful mixed spices 1 cupful currants Prune sauce
This is an ingredient list for a steamed carrot pudding, with the method left to the cook's judgment, as was common in the Crisco-era cookbooks where a single instruction paragraph often covered a page of similar puddings. A few things need translating before you start.
- The missing methodCream the shortening and sugar, add the grated carrot and potato, milk and crumbs, then fold in the sifted dry ingredients and the fruit. Turn into a greased 1 1/2-quart mold or pudding basin, cover tightly with greased parchment and foil, and steam over simmering water for 2 1/2 to 3 hours, topping up the water as it boils away.
- CriscoAn all-vegetable hydrogenated shortening, introduced in 1911 and the reason this book exists. Modern shortening works the same way by volume; 3/4 cupful is 6 ounces. Butter gives more flavor but a slightly firmer, less tender crumb.
- Grated raw potatoGrate it last and add it immediately, or it will oxidize gray. The starch and moisture are doing structural work here in place of eggs, which this pudding does without entirely.
- CurrantsZante currants, the small dried grape, not fresh red or black currants. If you cannot find them, use extra raisins rather than anything fresh.
- Mixed spicesA period pudding-spice blend, the exact make-up of which varied: cinnamon and nutmeg usually dominate, with smaller amounts of clove, allspice, mace or ginger. A teaspoonful of commercial pumpkin pie or mixed spice is a fair substitute.
- CupfulAn American cupful of 8 fluid ounces, as in a modern measuring cup. Grated vegetables should be packed lightly, not pressed down.
- Prune sauceGiven here as a name only. It would normally be stewed pitted prunes pushed through a sieve, thinned with their cooking liquid and sweetened, sometimes with lemon. Serve warm and pourable.
- Yield and keepingProbably six to eight servings, though the book gives no yield. Like other steamed puddings it is generally reckoned better after a day or two wrapped and chilled; re-steam for 30 to 45 minutes to serve.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, which is why the shortening is named as an ingredient rather than described generically. The pudding itself is much older than the fat in it: grated carrot and potato puddings belong to a British tradition of using root vegetables for sweetness and moisture, a habit that grew more useful whenever eggs, butter and sugar were dear. This one has no eggs at all, leaning on starch from the potato and breadcrumbs to hold it together, and it uses baking powder where an earlier nineteenth-century version might have called for soda. Steamed puddings of this kind were a common winter dessert in Anglo-American households into the twentieth century, served with a fruit sauce rather than a pastry.