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Sponge Pudding
Mix well together a pound of flour, a tea-spoonful of ground ginger, the same of tartaric acid, half a tea-spoonful of ground cloves and nutmeg mixed, a quarter of a pound of clarified dripping, a raw egg, two ounces of brown sugar, and a gill and a half of milk. After this mixture has been well beaten and thoroughly incorporated, add a tea-spoonful of soda dissolved in a table-spoonful of water, and beat it well in. Put the mixture in a greased basin, leaving nearly a third of the room for it to swell, and steam it for two and a half to three hours. Probable cost, 8d.
A plain steamed pudding of the everyday sort, leavened with tartaric acid and soda rather than eggs and air. A few of its terms and proportions need translating before it will work in a modern kitchen.
- The gillAn imperial gill is 5 fluid ounces, so a gill and a half is 7.5 fl oz, about 210 ml or a scant cup. This is a stiff batter, closer to a dropping dough than a pourable sponge mixture.
- Acid and soda are a pairThe teaspoon of tartaric acid and the teaspoon of soda are the raising agent, effectively home-mixed baking powder. Add the dissolved soda last, beat it in quickly, and get the basin into the steamer at once; the gas begins escaping the moment the two meet in a wet batter.
- Clarified drippingBeef or pork dripping, rendered and strained. Butter or shredded suet gives the same result in the same quantity, 4 oz to the pound of flour; dripping carries a savoury note that reads as old-fashioned rather than unpleasant.
- Not a sponge as we mean itVictorian cookbooks used "sponge pudding" loosely for any light-ish steamed pudding. With one egg to a pound of flour this is a dense, close-crumbed spice pudding, not a whisked sponge.
- The basin and the coveringThe recipe gives no basin size; a pound of flour makes enough mixture that a 3-pint (1.7 litre) basin is needed if it is to be filled only about two-thirds, as directed. Grease it well. Cover with pleated greaseproof paper and foil tied under the rim, or the condensing steam will soak the top.
- SteamingStand the basin on a trivet or folded cloth in a pan of gently simmering water reaching halfway up the sides, lid on. Top up with boiling water as it drops. Two and a half hours is enough for this size; three suits a fuller basin.
- Yield and servingServes six to eight. It wants a sauce, since there is little sugar in it: custard, a thin sweet white sauce, or golden syrup warmed with a squeeze of lemon.
The tartaric acid here is worth noticing. Commercial baking powder was available in Britain from around the middle of the nineteenth century, but recipes of the period show cooks still buying acid and soda separately and combining them in the bowl. The recipe belongs to the frugal end of the book's range: a pound of flour, one egg, two ounces of sugar and clarified dripping, for a stated cost of eightpence, feeding a family. Steaming rather than baking needed no oven at all, only a covered basin over the fire. Ginger, cloves and nutmeg were common spicing for English boiled and steamed puddings, and are used here with a free hand to carry a mixture that is otherwise mostly flour and fat.