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English Carrot Pudding
One pound grated carrots, three-fourths pound chopped suet, half pound each raisins and currants, four table-spoons sugar, eight table-spoons flour, and spices to suit the taste. Boil four hours, place in the oven for twenty minutes, and serve with wine sauce.- Mrs. E. A. W., Washington, D. C.
A boiled suet pudding of the plainest English type, written for cooks who already knew how to tie up a pudding cloth. The recipe gives no vessel, no liquid and no yield, so those need filling in.
- The hinge: keep the water boiling and topped upA pudding basin or floured cloth goes into a pot of boiling water that must stay at a steady simmer for the full four hours, with the water level kept at least halfway up the basin. If the pot boils dry or the water drops off the boil for long, the pudding turns dense and greasy at the centre.
- SuetThree-quarters of a pound of beef suet, chopped fine rather than melted, is what makes the pudding light: the shreds melt in the steam and leave the crumb open. Packaged shredded suet works; if using suet from the butcher, freeze it briefly and grate it. Frozen grated butter is a common substitute, at the cost of some of the character.
- Currants are not red currantsThese are Zante currants, the small dried grape sold near the raisins. Fresh currants would wreck the mixture.
- There is no liquid, and that is intentionalThere is no liquid listed -- The pound of grated carrot supplies nearly all the moisture. Grate it fine on the small holes and use it at once; the mixture should be stiff enough to hold its shape on a spoon. Other carrot pudding recipes of the period often include beaten eggs and a little milk, and adding one or two eggs and a splash of milk does no harm here.
- Spices to suit the tasteFor this quantity, roughly a teaspoon of cinnamon with half a teaspoon each of nutmeg, ginger and allspice, and a good pinch of salt, which the recipe omits but wants.
- The twenty minutes in the ovenThe recipe names no oven heat; a moderate oven, around 350F, will dry and lightly crust the surface after the pudding is turned out. This is finishing, not cooking; watch it, as the outside can colour quickly.
- Wine sauceWine sauces of the period were generally butter and sugar creamed and thinned with wine, warmed without boiling. A hard sauce or brandy butter serves the same purpose.
- Yield and timingAbout eight to ten servings from a 1.5 to 2 quart basin. It can be boiled a day ahead and reheated by steaming for an hour, then given its oven finish.
Carrot puddings belong to a long English line of sweet boiled puddings that used vegetables and dried fruit to carry sugar and spice, and they sit close to the plum pudding of the same tradition; the suet, the raisins and currants, the four hours in the pot and the wine sauce are all shared equipment. Grated carrot was valued for sweetness and moisture, and the reason often given is that sugar was expensive and cooks were used to stretching it; the habit persisted long enough to reappear in the ration cookery of the twentieth century. That this one arrives in Buckeye Cookery as a contribution from a woman in Washington, D. C., is typical of the book's method: it was assembled from contributors' own kitchen papers, which is why the instructions assume a cook who already owns a pudding cloth and needs only the proportions.