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Molasses Pudding
Three cups of flour, one each of molasses, melted butter and hot water; one tea-spoon soda; steam three hours; serve with a sauce of butter and sugar worked to a cream, with hot water added to make it the proper consistency, and flavored with vanilla. Some add a tea-cup raisins. -Mrs. Jenks, Bellefontaine.
A plain steamed molasses pudding of the sort that needed only a stovetop, a mold and three unattended hours. The proportions are terse even by Buckeye Cookery standards, so a few decisions are left to the cook.
- The hinge: keep the steam steadyA batter this dense rises only on soda and steam, and the mold must stay in gently boiling water the whole three hours without going dry. Set a plate or rack under the mold so it does not sit on the pot bottom, and top up with boiling water — not cold — as the level drops.
- The measurementsRead "one each" as one cup of molasses, one cup of melted butter and one cup of hot water against three cups of flour. A full cup of butter is generous for a steamed pudding; half that gives a lighter crumb.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cooking molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and will fight the soda. The soda is there to neutralize the molasses' acidity as much as to leaven, so dissolve it in the hot water rather than sifting it into the flour.
- The moldA 2 to 2½ quart pudding basin, coffee can or bundt-shaped tin, buttered and filled no more than two-thirds. Cover tightly with foil or a floured cloth tied down, or condensation will soak the top.
- DonenessThree hours is right for a full-size mold, but check with a skewer at two and a half; it should come out clean and the pudding should have pulled slightly from the sides. Let it stand ten minutes before turning out.
- The sauceThis is a warm butter-sugar sauce, not the chilled hard sauce of Christmas pudding. Cream about half a cup of butter with a cup of confectioners' or superfine sugar, then beat in hot water a spoonful at a time until it pours; add vanilla off the heat. Granulated sugar will stay gritty unless you dissolve it in the water first.
- RaisinsThe optional teacup is roughly ¾ cup. Toss them in a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink through the batter.
- YieldEight to ten servings. It keeps well and reheats by steaming for twenty minutes.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (Marysville, Ohio, 1877) was assembled from contributions by Ohio housewives, and the credit line — Mrs. Jenks of Bellefontaine — is typical of how the book worked: hundreds of short, unadorned recipes gathered by name and town. A steamed molasses pudding belonged to the cheapest end of the dessert repertoire. Molasses was generally regarded as one of the cheaper sweeteners, and steaming on the back of the range demanded no oven fuel and no attention beyond keeping the kettle filled. The pairing of molasses with soda was well established by this date. The butter-and-sugar sauce, thinned with hot water and flavored with vanilla, is the plain cousin of the brandy and wine sauces in wealthier cookbooks — the same idea with the liquor left out.