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Cracker Raisin Pudding
Scald 5 cupfuls milk; pour over 1 1/2 cupfuls rolled cracker crumbs; add 1/4 cupful cold butter, 1/2 cupful molasses, 1/2 teaspoonful each of salt and cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoonful mace, 1 pound seeded raisins, 6 eggs beaten with 1 cupful brown sugar; bake four hours; whipped cream garnish.
This is a cracker-crumb version of Indian pudding — a long, slow custard baked until it sets and caramelizes. The four-hour bake is not a misprint, but it needs a low oven and a water bath to survive it.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given; the recipe leaves it to the cook. For a four-hour bake, something around 300F is a sensible modern equivalent, and setting the dish in a pan of hot water will buffer the heat and help keep the custard from curdling.
- Rolled cracker crumbsPlain soda crackers or unsalted saltines, crushed with a rolling pin — not graham crumbs, which are sweetened, and not dry breadcrumbs, which absorb differently. About 1 1/2 cups of crumbs comes from roughly 4 oz of crackers. Reduce the added salt if your crackers are salted.
- Cold butterA quarter cupful is 4 tablespoons. It goes in after the scalded milk has been poured over the crumbs and melts into the hot mixture on its own; there is no need to cream or cut it in.
- Tempering the eggsThe milk and crumbs must cool to warm before the beaten eggs and sugar go in, or the eggs scramble. The recipe does not say so, but the order of operations depends on it.
- RaisinsA pound is a full 3 cups, which is a great deal of fruit for this amount of custard. "Seeded" means the seeds have been removed — modern raisins are already seedless, so no preparation is needed. Plumping them in hot water for ten minutes keeps them from drawing moisture out of the pudding.
- Molasses and brown sugarUse unsulphured molasses; blackstrap is too bitter at half a cup. Together with the sugar this is a firmly sweet, dark pudding in the New England mold.
- Vessel and yieldThis makes a large pudding — use a 3-quart baking dish or deep casserole. It serves 10 to 12, and is better warm than hot, with the whipped cream added at the table rather than in the oven.
- Testing for doneAfter four hours the center should be set but still slightly yielding, with a browned skin on top. A knife inserted an inch from the edge should come out clean; the very center may still be soft and will firm as it cools.