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Suet Pudding
1 cupful chopped beef suet, 1 cupful raisins, 1 cupful molasses, 1/2 cupful currants, 1 cupful sour milk, 1 cupful corn meal, brown and white flour enough to make a stiff batter, 1 teaspoonful soda, 1 teaspoonful cinnamon; cloves, nutmeg, a little salt. Stir molasses and milk together, put in soda, then suet, flour, etc. Steam three or four hours.
Sauce.--1 cupful sugar, 1/2 cupful butter; mix well together with 3 tablespoonfuls flour and 1 of cinnamon and nutmeg. Stir in 1 pint boiling water and let cook until it thickens.
A steamed molasses pudding of the plainest New England type, leavened by the reaction of soda with sour milk and molasses. The hinge is the steaming: a stiff batter of this sort needs continuous gentle steam and a covered mould, or it will be dense and wet in the middle.
- Beef suetAsk a butcher for raw kidney suet and chop or grate it very fine while cold; a cupful is in the region of 4 oz, depending how finely it is cut. Packaged shredded suet works; vegetable shortening, which melts at a lower temperature, tends to give a slightly heavier crumb.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, thick and acidic. Buttermilk is the direct modern stand-in; failing that, add a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar to a cup of whole milk and let it stand ten minutes. Pasteurised milk left out simply spoils and will not do.
- SodaSoda here is bicarbonate of soda, not baking powder. The teaspoonful is calibrated to the acid in the sour milk and the molasses, so do not substitute measure for measure.
- Brown and white flour"Brown flour" of this period generally means whole wheat or graham flour. The recipe gives no proportions; a roughly equal mix of the two is a reasonable reading. "Stiff batter" is thicker than cake batter but still droppable from a spoon; add flour until it reaches that point rather than to a fixed measure.
- MolassesUse unsulphured dark molasses rather than blackstrap, which is bitter and less acidic than the table molasses of the period, so it gives the soda less to work against.
- The mouldGrease a two-quart pudding basin or a covered pudding mould, fill it no more than two-thirds, and cover tightly with a lid or with buttered parchment and foil tied down. Stand it on a rack in a pot with water halfway up the sides and keep the water at a bare simmer, topping up with boiling water as it drops.
- TimingThe recipe allows three to four hours; three suits a two-quart mould, with the longer time for a very stiff batter or a densely filled mould. Smaller moulds will be done sooner. It is done when a skewer to the centre comes out clean and the pudding has pulled slightly from the sides. Let it rest ten minutes before turning out.
- The sauceCream the sugar and butter, work in the flour and spice, then whisk in the boiling water off the heat before returning it to a low flame. Added straight into a hot pan the flour will lump. Cook two or three minutes to lose the raw-flour taste.
- YieldEight to ten servings. Steamed puddings keep several days wrapped, and reheat well by steaming a further 30-40 minutes.