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Cleveland Pudding
One cup of New Orleans molasses, one cup of sweet milk, one cup of chopped raisins seeded, one teaspoonful soda, one teaspoonful cinnamon, one teaspoonful mace or nutmeg, half a teaspoon of cloves, three cups of flour, one egg. Steam one hour and one half; a pinch of salt. Serve with a rich sauce.
A plain steamed molasses pudding of the type that turns up in nearly every American household book of the late nineteenth century. It is easy to reproduce; the only variables are the molasses, the mold, and knowing when it is done.
- New Orleans molassesThis means unsulphured cane molasses of medium grade, not blackstrap. Blackstrap is far more bitter and mineral and will overwhelm the spice; ordinary supermarket unsulphured molasses is the correct substitute.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh whole milk, specified to distinguish it from sour or buttermilk, which was the other thing likely to be in the house. Whole milk is right here since the batter contains no butter or suet.
- Soda and acidThe teaspoon of soda is leavening against the acidity of the molasses, and it is the only leavening present. Mix and get the pudding into the steamer promptly; the reaction begins in the bowl.
- The moldYou want a 1.5 to 2 quart pudding basin or a covered tin, well greased and filled no more than two-thirds. Cover tightly with a lid or with buttered foil tied down, or condensation will soak the top.
- SteamingSet the mold on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water reaching halfway up its sides, and keep the water at a bare, steady simmer, topping it up with boiling water as needed. The recipe gives an hour and a half; a larger or more deeply filled mold may want longer.
- TestingA skewer into the center should come out clean and the pudding should feel springy and pull very slightly from the sides. Let it rest ten minutes before turning out, or it will slump.
- Seeding raisinsNineteenth-century raisins came with seeds and had to be cut and picked over. Modern seedless raisins need only be chopped, and a brief soak in hot water or spirits keeps them from drawing moisture out of the batter.
- A rich sauceThe period default is a hard sauce (creamed butter and powdered sugar with vanilla or brandy) or a warm foamy egg-and-butter sauce. A lemon or vanilla cornstarch sauce also works and cuts the molasses.
- YieldServes eight generously. Leftovers reheat well by re-steaming for fifteen or twenty minutes; the pudding is denser but perfectly good the second day.
Steamed puddings were the practical dessert of a coal- or wood-fired kitchen: they need a pot and a steady simmer rather than an oven held at temperature, and they can share the stove with everything else. This one belongs to the large American family of molasses-and-spice steamed puddings that descend from English plum and suet puddings but drop the suet and lean on cane syrup, which was cheap and shipped north from Louisiana in barrels. Names attached to such recipes in community and household cookbooks are often geographic or personal credit rather than any claim of origin, and the reason this one is called "Cleveland Pudding" is not recorded. The spice list, cinnamon with mace or nutmeg and a smaller measure of cloves, is a common American baking combination of the period and turns up in similar proportion in gingerbreads and fruitcakes of the same decades.