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TREACLE PUDDING (another way)
Make some good firm suet pastry, roll it out to the third of an inch in thickness, and longer than it is broad. Spread treacle all over it within half an inch of the edge. Wet the edges, roll up the pudding into the form of a bolster, and fasten the ends securely. Wring a pudding-cloth out of boiling water, flour it well, fold it round the pudding, and tie the ends firmly. Plunge the pudding into boiling water, and keep it boiling quickly until done enough. If liked, a table-spoonful of flour and a quarter of a tea-spoonful of ground ginger may be mixed with every four table-spoonfuls of treacle, or a little grated lemon-rind, the juice of a lemon, and a few bread-crumbs may be sprinkled over the treacle. When the pudding is done enough, let it cool a minute or two, turn it out carefully, serve on a hot dish, and send melted butter to table with it. Time to boil, one hour and a half, or more, according to the size. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A boiled roly-poly, not the modern basin sponge. The pastry is the whole dish, so keep it cold and keep the water at a hard boil.
- TreacleVictorian "treacle" often means dark treacle (British black treacle, close to unsulphured molasses), though the word was used loosely; golden syrup gives the sweeter, milder pudding most people now expect. Four tablespoons is about 3 oz by weight, and the added flour in the variation would help stop it running out of the roll.
- Suet pastryGood firm suet crust is 8 oz self-raising flour (or plain flour with 2 tsp baking powder) to 4 oz shredded beef suet and a pinch of salt, bound with roughly 5 fl oz cold water. Packet vegetable suet works identically; grated frozen butter is a weaker substitute because it melts before the crust sets.
- Thickness and sealingA third of an inch is thicker than it sounds, and deliberate so — thin crust splits. Leaving the half-inch treacle-free margin and pinching the wetted edges and ends hard is what keeps the filling inside; a leaking roll boils away into syrupy water.
- The pudding clothScald a square of unbleached cotton or a clean tea towel, wring it out, and dust it heavily with flour: the flour forms the skin that seals the pudding. Wrap loosely enough to allow the crust to swell, tie the ends like a cracker, and if the cloth is long, tie a loop for lifting.
- BoilingFull rolling boil, lid on, water topped up from a kettle so it never drops off the boil. An hour and a half suits a roll made from 8 oz of flour; a large one wants two hours. Slack, simmering water gives a heavy, greyish crust.
- Steaming insteadIf the cloth is more trouble than it is worth, wrap the roll in buttered parchment and then foil, pleated along the top, and steam it over water for the same time. The result may be slightly less dense than the boiled version.
- "Melted butter"In this book melted butter means a sauce: butter worked with a little flour and thinned with water or milk, seasoned, and brought just to the boil. Modern cooks often send warm custard or thin cream instead.
- Yield and costFive or six portions as written. The 1s. costing marks this as an inexpensive, filling pudding; flour, suet and treacle were all cheap store-cupboard staples.
Boiled roly-poly puddings belong to the era of the pudding cloth, when a single pot over the fire had to produce both dinner and something sweet after it, and suet crust was the cheapest way to make a little sugar go a long way. Treacle — the drainings from sugar refining — was the sweetener of the working-class larder for much of the nineteenth century, far cheaper than refined sugar; Lyle's Golden Syrup, introduced in the 1880s, gradually displaced the darker sort in puddings of this kind and is what most British cooks now mean when they say "treacle sponge". Cassell's heads this "another way" simply because it is a second treacle pudding recipe; the rolled, cloth-boiled form is generally reckoned older than the basin pudding. The optional ginger, lemon and breadcrumbs are common Victorian additions to treacle.