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Graham Pudding
One and one-half cups of graham flour, one-half cup of molasses, one cup of milk, one cup of raisins, one and one-half teaspoons of baking powder, and a little salt. Steam two hours, and serve with
— Mrs. Susan Ives
sauce.
A plain steamed pudding of the sort a village cook made from pantry staples — no eggs, no butter, no sugar beyond the molasses. It is closer to a steamed brown bread than to a dessert pudding, and it depends entirely on the sauce.
- Fill the mold two-thirds, and no moreThis is the hinge. The only lift comes from baking powder and steam, so it needs headroom to rise but a tightly covered mold to stay moist. Grease a pudding basin or coffee tin big enough to leave that headroom, cover with buttered foil or a floured cloth tied down, and set it on a rack in a pot with boiling water reaching halfway up the sides.
- Graham flourCoarse-ground whole wheat flour, named for Sylvester Graham and still sold under that name. Ordinary whole wheat flour substitutes directly; it will give a slightly finer crumb.
- MolassesUse unsulphured light or dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and would overwhelm a pudding this plain. Molasses was in common use as a household sweetener in this period, not only as a flavoring.
- Baking powderTartrate powders of the period were single-acting and began working the moment they were wet. Modern double-acting powder is more forgiving, but the batter should still go into the mold and over the heat without delay.
- "A little salt"A quarter teaspoon is right for this quantity of flour. With no butter or eggs in the batter, salt is doing real work.
- RaisinsA cup of raisins to a cup and a half of liquid is a heavy fruiting. Toss them in a spoonful of the flour before mixing so they stay suspended rather than sinking to the bottom of the mold.
- Timing and waterTwo hours is what the recipe gives, and it suits a mold of this size at a steady low boil. Check the water level at the hour mark and top up with boiling water — if the pot runs dry the pudding scorches and stops cooking.
- Yield and servingSix modest servings. Let it stand five minutes before unmolding, and serve warm; steamed puddings turn dense and gummy cold, though they reheat well in the steamer.
- The sauceThe reference is to a sauce recipe contributed by Mrs. Susan Ives and printed elsewhere in the book. Any warm sweet pudding sauce — a hard sauce, or a thin cooked vanilla or lemon sauce — serves the same purpose, which is to supply the fat and sugar the pudding itself lacks.
Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the New England temperance preacher and dietary reformer of the 1830s who argued that unbolted whole wheat was morally and physically superior to fine white flour. His name outlived his movement, attaching itself to the flour, to graham crackers, and to a whole class of homely nineteenth-century baked goods. A steamed graham pudding like this one belongs to the long era before every kitchen had a reliable oven, when a covered mold set in a kettle of simmering water was the ordinary way to cook a pudding — cheap in fuel and forgiving of a fire that wandered. Its appearance in a village receipts section, with a sauce credited to a named neighbor, is typical of community cookbooks of the period: the pudding is common property, the sauce is somebody's.