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Steamed Fruit Pudding
1 Cupful Snowdrift 1 Cupful Brown Sugar 1 Cupful Grated Raw Carrots 1 Cupful Grated Raw Potatoes 1 Cupful Chopped Raisins ⅓ Cupful Cleaned Currants ⅓ Cupful Equal Parts Citron and Candied Orange Peel (optional) 1½ Cupfuls Flour 1 Teaspoonful Soda 1 Tablespoonful Warm Water 1 Teaspoonful Salt 1 Teaspoonful Each Cinnamon, Nutmeg and Allspice Cream together the sugar and Snowdrift, then add the remaining ingredients in the order given, mix well, transfer to a quart and a half sized mould, or two empty Snowdrift cans, rubbed with Snowdrift, cover and steam five hours. Serve hot with any of the Hard Sauces, Lemon Sauce, or Orange Sauce, given in this book.
Although extremely economical, this pudding is very rich in flavor.
An eggless, milkless steamed pudding built on grated root vegetables — the carrot and potato supply both moisture and body. It behaves like a Christmas pudding but is far cheaper, and it needs the same long, gentle steam.
- SnowdriftA brand of cottonseed-oil shortening sold in tins (later formulations hydrogenated). Substitute an equal measure of any solid vegetable shortening; butter works but firms the crumb and shortens the keeping time.
- The soda and the warm water go togetherThe list separates them, but the tablespoon of warm water is there to dissolve the teaspoon of soda. Mix them in a cup and add the solution near the end, once the fruit and flour are in, so the rise is not spent before the pudding is in the mould.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants. "Cleaned" means picked over for stems and grit — modern packaged fruit needs only a quick rinse and a thorough drying.
- CitronCandied citron peel, the pale green candied rind sold at Christmas, not the whole fruit. If it is unavailable, all candied orange peel is a reasonable stand-in.
- Grating the vegetablesGrate carrot and potato fine and use the potato at once; grated raw potato browns within minutes and will grey the batter if it sits.
- The mould and the tinsA quart-and-a-half mould is about 1.5 litres. The recipe's 'two empty Snowdrift cans' would have been two tins of a size totalling roughly that volume; two straight-sided tins or basins of about 750 ml each do the same job. Grease well and fill only two-thirds full, then cover tightly with a lid or pleated foil tied down, or steam will condense into the pudding.
- Five hours is not an exaggerationA dense fruit-and-root batter with no eggs needs the full time to set and to cook the raw starch through. Keep the water at a bare simmer, halfway up the mould, and top it up with boiling water so the pot never runs dry.
- Yield and keepingNo yield is given; a mould this size will serve roughly eight to ten. Like other rich steamed puddings it should keep wrapped and chilled for a day or two, and can be re-steamed until heated through to serve hot with hard sauce.
Puddings thickened with grated carrot and potato belong to a long line of thrifty English steamed puddings, and they multiplied in American cookbooks during and just after the First World War, when sugar, butter and eggs were scarce or dear under the voluntary conservation drives of the Food Administration, and vegetables were not. The root vegetables do double duty: the starch binds where eggs would, and the carrot's sweetness lets a single cup of brown sugar carry a pudding this size. Books like this one were published by shortening manufacturers to show cooks that a vegetable fat could stand in for butter and lard in everything from pie crust to Christmas pudding, which is why the brand name appears in the ingredient list, in the greasing instructions, and even as the suggested mould.