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Suet Pudding
One cup molasses, one of sweet milk, one of suet chopped fine, or half a cup melted butter, one of raisins, half cup currants, two and a half cups flour, half tea-spoon soda; mix well, salt and spice to taste, and steam two hours. -Mrs. S. W. Case, Minneapolis, Minn.
A plain steamed pudding of the molasses-and-suet family, the kind meant to sit on the back of the stove while dinner cooked. The measurements are generous and forgiving; the only real technique is steady, unhurried steam.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys, sold by butchers and often needing an order in advance. Chop or grate it very fine while cold so it disperses through the batter rather than melting into pockets. The recipe's own alternative, half a cup of melted butter, gives a softer, cakier crumb and is entirely acceptable.
- "Sweet milk"Nineteenth-century shorthand for fresh milk, as opposed to the sour or buttermilk that appears elsewhere in the book. Whole milk is what is wanted here.
- Soda and molassesHalf a teaspoon of soda is the only leavening, and it works by reacting with the acid in the molasses. Use real molasses rather than a neutral substitute syrup, or the pudding will rise poorly. Mix and get it into the steamer promptly; the reaction begins as soon as the two meet.
- Spice to tasteFor a pudding of this size, about a teaspoon of cinnamon with half a teaspoon each of nutmeg and cloves, and a quarter teaspoon of salt, is in period character. Ginger and allspice were also common.
- The vesselButter a pudding basin or metal mold with room to spare for this quantity of batter (two quarts is safer than one and a half) and fill it no more than two-thirds. Cover tightly with buttered parchment and foil, or a floured cloth tied with string, so condensation cannot drip in and make the top sodden.
- SteamingSet the mold on a rack in a deep pot, add boiling water to come halfway up the sides, cover, and hold at a bare simmer. Top up with boiling water as it evaporates; if the pot runs dry the pudding scorches. Two hours is accurate for this quantity, and a skewer should come out clean.
- Yield and servingServes six to eight. Turn out while hot and serve with a hard sauce or a boiled vanilla or lemon sauce. Leftovers reheat well by steaming for twenty minutes or by the slice in a covered pan.
- FruitThe raisins and currants may be tossed in a spoonful of the measured flour to keep them suspended. Modern seedless raisins need no preparation, but dried currants benefit from a brief soak in hot water if very hard.
Steamed suet puddings came to American kitchens straight from English practice, where a floured cloth and a pot of boiling water long predated reliable ovens, and they survived in the United States because they asked nothing of a stove but a steady fire. The molasses here is the tell of an American household rather than an English one: cheap, dark and abundant in the nineteenth century, it did the work that sugar did abroad, sweetening and darkening the pudding while also supplying the acid that set off the soda. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping is generally dated to 1877, with expanded later editions issued after the compiler moved to Minneapolis "endneapolis contributor. The attribution to Mrs. S. W. Case of Minneapolis is typical of the book's method: a community collection in which each cook's name stood as the guarantee of the receipt. Suet was a by-product of butchering rather than something bought.