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Carrot Pudding, Baked or Boiled
Boil some large carrots till they are tender, pass them through a sieve, and mix one pound of the pulp with half a pound of finely-grated bread-crumbs, six ounces of finely-shredded suet, and a quarter of a pound each of stoned raisins, washed currants, and brown sugar. Mix these ingredients well together, and add a little grated nutmeg, a large pinch of salt, and three eggs well beaten, together with as much new milk as will make a thick batter. If baked, put the mixture into a buttered pie-dish, and bake it in a moderate oven; if boiled, put it in a well-oiled mould, tie it in a cloth, and boil or steam it. Serve with sweet sauce. Time to bake, one hour and a half; to boil, three hours. Sufficient for six persons. Probable cost, 1s. 4d.
A Victorian pudding of the plainer sort — carrot standing in for much of the fat and fruit of a Christmas pudding. The proportions are sound, and the only real decisions are oven temperature and how you handle the steaming.
- Moderate ovenFor the baked version, 350F (175C). A pie-dish of this depth will need close to the full hour and a half; it is set when a skewer in the centre comes out clean and the top has browned.
- Boiled versus steamedThree hours of boiling means the mould sits in water at a rolling simmer, topped up from a kettle so it never drops below the halfway mark on the mould. Steaming over water takes the same three hours and carries less risk of water getting in past the cloth. Either way, cover the mould with pleated paper or foil under the cloth to allow for rise.
- SuetSix ounces of shredded beef suet. Packaged shredded suet, beef or vegetable, works directly; a block from the butcher needs the membrane pulled off and the fat grated while very cold. Frozen grated butter is the usual substitute, though it gives a denser crumb.
- Bread-crumbsHalf a pound of fresh crumbs from a day-old white loaf, not dried packaged crumbs, which will absorb far more milk and give a heavy result.
- Currants and raisins"Washed currants" refers to dried Zante currants, which arrived gritty and needed rinsing and drying; modern packets do not. "Stoned raisins" simply means seedless.
- Carrot pulpA pound of sieved pulp needs roughly a pound and a half of raw carrots. A food processor does the job, but drain the boiled carrots thoroughly first — wet pulp will throw the milk quantity out badly.
- New milkWhole milk. Add it slowly at the end: you want a batter that drops heavily from the spoon rather than pours, and the amount depends entirely on how wet the carrot pulp is.
- Sweet sauceThe recipe names no sauce; in books of this period the term generally covers a hot sweet white sauce or a brandy-and-sugar butter. Either suits it; the pudding itself is only lightly sweetened.
- YieldSix as stated, and it reheats well — steamed portions can be warmed through in a microwave or resteamed for twenty minutes.
Carrot puddings appear in English cookery books from the eighteenth century onward, and belong to a family of sweet root-vegetable puddings — carrot, parsnip, potato — that used the natural sugar and bulk of a cheap vegetable to stretch expensive dried fruit and suet. The book gives the cost as 1s. 4d. for six, which is the point: this is a full boiled pudding at less than a plum pudding of the same size would have cost. Carrot was pressed into puddings and cakes again under rationing, most conspicuously in the Second World War, when the Ministry of Food promoted it for much the reason Victorian household cooks already knew. The dual instruction, baked or boiled, is common in books of this period, when many kitchens still lacked a reliable oven and a pot over the fire was the surer option.