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Cheap Plum Pudding
One tea-cup chopped suet, one tea-cup chopped raisins, one tea-cup molasses or sugar, one cup sour milk, three cups flour, one teaspoon soda, one tablespoon ground cinnamon, one half teaspoon cloves, a little salt, and steam three hours.
A plain steamed suet pudding of the sort that lived on a back burner all afternoon. The proportions are sound; the only real work is setting up a steamer that will not run dry.
- Tea-cup vs. cupThe recipe uses both terms. Nineteenth-century tea-cup measures were not standardised; a tea-cup is often reckoned at something less than a modern 8-oz cup, while "cup" is usually taken as the full measure. Treating everything as a level 8-oz cup still works, but the batter may be slightly stiffer than intended; loosen with a spoonful or two of milk.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys, sold by butchers and often available frozen and shredded. Chop or grate it cold so it stays in small pieces; it melts during steaming and leaves the crumb light. Frozen grated butter is the usual substitute, giving a slightly denser pudding.
- Sour milk and sodaSour milk here means naturally clabbered raw milk, mildly acidic. Modern pasteurized milk soured with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar per cup, or plain buttermilk, supplies the acid the teaspoon of soda needs. Without it the pudding tastes soapy and will not rise.
- Molasses or sugarMolasses gives the dark, spiced pudding the name promises; granulated sugar makes something closer to a spice cake. If you use molasses, note that it is also acidic and will react with the soda, so mix and get it into the steamer without delay.
- Mould and steamerFill a greased pudding basin or coffee can of about 2 1/2 quarts (or two smaller moulds) roughly two-thirds full, cover tightly with greased parchment and foil, and set it on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water halfway up the sides. Keep the water at a bare simmer and top it up with boiling water as it falls.
- Three hoursThat is not padding. A dense suet batter needs the long, gentle heat to cook through without setting a crust. Test with a skewer at 2 1/2 hours; it should come out clean and the pudding should feel springy.
- Yield and servingServes six to eight. It was traditionally turned out hot and eaten with hard sauce, a thin sweetened cream, or lemon sauce. Leftovers steam or microwave back to life better than they keep at room temperature.
"Plum pudding" kept the older English sense of plum as any dried fruit — a usage generally traced to the seventeenth century and the plum porridge that preceded the pudding — so the raisins here are the plums. What makes this version "cheap" is what it leaves out: no eggs, no brandy, no candied peel, no long maturing, and molasses standing in for sugar. Household books of the later nineteenth century seem often to have printed such economy puddings alongside the grand Christmas article, since suet, flour and sour milk were things a kitchen already had rather than things to be bought in. Steamed puddings also suited a coal or wood range well, occupying a low steady heat for hours without the fuel and attention that baking demanded, which may be one reason they lingered in American cookbooks as gas ovens came in.