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Treacle Pudding
Make some good crust with suet or dripping, and roll it out to the thickness of a third of an inch. Butter a pudding-basin, and line it with the pastry. Put a layer of pastry at the bottom, then a layer of treacle, and repeat until the basin is full. Put a cover on the top, moisten the edges, and pinch them closely together. Wring a pudding-cloth out of boiling water, flour it well, and tie it securely over the basin. Plunge the pudding into as much boiling water as will cover it, and boil quickly and without ceasing until it is done enough. Turn it out on a hot dish, and serve very hot. If liked, a little lemon-juice, grated lemon-peel, and fine bread-crumbs may be sprinkled over each layer of treacle. Time to boil, three hours for a moderate-sized pudding. Sufficient for five or six persons. Probable cost, 1s.
A Victorian boiled suet pudding of the plainest kind: pastry, syrup, pastry, syrup, boiled in a cloth-covered basin for three hours. Two things decide whether it succeeds — the crust must be sealed properly, and the water must never go off the boil.
- What treacle means hereIn British usage treacle covers both black treacle (close to blackstrap molasses) and golden syrup, the pale refiner's syrup. For a pudding of this type golden syrup gives the familiar mild, buttery result; black treacle gives a dark, bitter-edged pudding. Molasses is the nearest US substitute for the dark version, light corn syrup a poor but workable stand-in for the pale.
- Suet crust proportionsThe book assumes you know the standard: 8 oz self-raising or plain flour with 4 oz shredded suet or chilled dripping, a pinch of salt, and cold water to a soft dough — half fat to flour. Vegetable suet works much the same. Roll to a scant 1/3 inch as directed; thicker and the centre stays doughy.
- The breadcrumbs are not optional in practiceThe breadcrumbs -- Treacle on its own melts to a thin syrup that can run at the seams. The breadcrumbs the recipe offers as an option thicken it into something that stays put, and the lemon cuts the sweetness. Something like a couple of tablespoons of crumbs and the juice and zest of half a lemon per pudding.
- Sealing the basinA floured cloth wrung out in boiling water still works, but a disc of pleated baking parchment topped with pleated foil, tied under the rim with string and a string handle across the top, is more reliable. The pleat allows the pudding to rise; any gap lets water in and gives you soup.
- Boiling versus steaming"Plunge into as much boiling water as will cover it" means fully submerged, with a trivet or folded cloth under the basin so it does not sit on the pan bottom. Keep a kettle of boiling water alongside and top up as it evaporates — adding cold water drops the temperature and the crust turns heavy. Steaming in a covered pan with water halfway up the basin gives a lighter result, though the timing may differ.
- Basin size and timingA "moderate-sized pudding" serving five or six is probably a basin of around 1 1/2 to 2 pints (roughly 850 ml to 1.1 litres). Three hours suits that; a smaller basin will need less. This pudding is forgiving of extra time but not of too little.
- Turning outRest five minutes before unmoulding, then invert onto a warmed deep dish, since syrup will run. Serve with custard or cream. Five or six portions, as stated.
- Probable costOne shilling. Cassell's gives a probable cost throughout; flour, suet and treacle were among the cheaper foods available.
Boiled suet puddings sealed in a cloth were a mainstay of English domestic cooking from the seventeenth century onward, and treacle was a common filling, cheap and widely available by the nineteenth century. This lined-basin version, with alternating layers of pastry and syrup, is a forerunner of the steamed sponge pudding most people now call treacle pudding, and a close relation of treacle tart, which uses a similar syrup-and-breadcrumb filling in a pastry case. The costed recipes in Cassell's point to a readership feeding a family cheaply, with a big pot on the range doing the work for three hours — though the cook still had to keep it at a steady boil and topped up. The lemon and breadcrumbs, offered here as a refinement, later became the usual treatment rather than an option.