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Austrian Pudding
Mix one pound of flour with a quarter of a pound of finely-shredded suet. Add a pinch of salt, a heaped tea-spoonful of baking-powder, a table-spoonful of chopped lemon-rind, and a table-spoonful of moist sugar. Mix a large breakfast-cupful of lukewarm milk with a cupful of good treacle; stir it into the flour, pour all into a well-oiled mould, and tie it in a floured cloth. Serve with sweet sauce. Time to boil, three hours. Sufficient for six persons. Probable cost, 8d.
A plain Victorian boiled suet pudding, sweetened with treacle rather than jam or dried fruit. Almost everything in it translates directly; the vessel and the water are where it goes wrong.
- Keep the water boiling, and topped upThis is the hinge. A boiled or steamed suet pudding needs three unbroken hours of gentle boil; if the pan drops off the boil or runs dry the crumb sets heavy and greasy. Top up from a kettle of already-boiling water, never cold.
- Breakfast-cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup, roughly 10 fl oz (about 1 1/4 US cups). The "cupful" of treacle that follows is likely the same cup, so expect a soft, dropping batter rather than a dough.
- TreacleBritish black treacle, or molasses that is not blackstrap. Golden syrup gives a paler, sweeter, much milder pudding and changes the character of the dish considerably.
- Moist sugarMoist sugar is unrefined light brown sugar. Any soft brown sugar stands in.
- SuetShredded beef suet, sold in packets in Britain and available frozen or from a butcher elsewhere. Vegetable suet works; butter is a poor substitute, as it melts sooner than suet and gives a heavier, closer texture.
- Mould and clothUse a pudding basin of about 3 pints, buttered, filled no more than two-thirds to leave room for the rise; a 2-pint basin will not hold this quantity. Modern practice is a pleated round of baking parchment under foil tied with string rather than a floured cloth, with a string handle for lifting; set the basin on a trivet or folded cloth in the pan and steam with the water halfway up the sides.
- Baking-powderA heaped teaspoonful in a pound of flour is modest by modern reckoning. Victorian baking powders varied in strength; two level teaspoons of a current powder is nearer the intended lift.
- Sweet sauceThe book assumes the reader knows what this means: a thin pouring custard, or a lemon or brandy sauce. A jug of warm cream serves the same purpose.
- YieldSix as written, and it reheats well by steaming a further 30-40 minutes.
Boiled suet puddings were the backbone of the British sweet course through the nineteenth century, cheap to assemble, forgiving of a cook's attention and cooked on the same fire as the rest of dinner. The national labels attached to them in books like Cassell's were often loose to the point of decorative, the name signalling little about what was in the basin — here a suet-and-flour base flavoured with lemon rind and treacle. What is precise is the costing. The "probable cost, 8d." belongs to a tradition of household manuals that priced every dish, often said to have been so a mistress could check a cook's spending, and eightpence for a pudding feeding six marks this as everyday family food rather than anything for company.