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Black Pudding
1 egg. 1 cup New Orleans molasses 1 cup warm water 1 teaspoon soda (dissolved in a little hot water) ½ teaspoon cinnamon 1 cup seeded raisins 2½ cups Five Roses flour Pinch of salt Steam 2 to 3 hours.
A plain steamed molasses pudding with no eggs, butter or suet — the leavening is molasses reacting with soda, and the texture depends entirely on not overfilling the mould and not letting the water go off the boil.
- The hinge: keep the steam constantSet the covered mould on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water reaching halfway up its side, and top up with boiling water as it evaporates. If the pot goes dry or the boil drops, the pudding stalls and sets heavy in the middle.
- New Orleans molassesThis means light-to-medium unsulphured cane molasses, not blackstrap. Blackstrap is far more bitter and mineral, and will dominate the small amount of cinnamon. Ordinary supermarket unsulphured molasses is the right substitute.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian brand milled from hard spring wheat, generally stronger than today's soft all-purpose. Plain all-purpose works and gives a slightly tenderer crumb; measure the 2½ cups by spooning and levelling rather than scooping, or the batter turns stiff.
- The sodaOne teaspoon of baking soda, dissolved in hot water as directed. Soda needs an acid to work and the molasses supplies it, so no baking powder is called for; get the pudding into the steam promptly once it is mixed.
- Batter consistencyExpect a thick, spoonable batter rather than a dough. Grease the mould or a 1½- to 2-quart pudding basin well, fill it no more than two-thirds, and cover with a lid or a doubled sheet of greased foil tied down so condensation cannot drip in.
- Timing and donenessThe recipe allows two to three hours; a shallower mould will be at the shorter end, a deep basin at the longer. It is done when a skewer comes out clean and the pudding has pulled slightly from the sides; let it stand ten minutes before turning out.
- Yield and servingServes six to eight. A pudding this lean is meant to be eaten hot with a sauce — a hot lemon sauce, caramel sauce or plain sweetened cream — and it reheats well in steam the next day.
Despite the name, this has nothing to do with the blood sausage of the same title; in North American household baking a dark, molasses-stained steamed pudding could carry the name, the colour coming from cane syrup and raisins. Steamed puddings held on long after cakes moved to the oven because they needed no eggs, no butter and no reliable oven heat — useful in a kitchen where the range was wood- or coal-fired and the top of the stove was the most controllable surface in the house. The Five Roses Cook Book, issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to promote its flour, carried a substantial section of boiled and steamed puddings, most of them built from pantry staples: flour, molasses, soda, dried fruit, water. Recipes of this kind, thrifty and shelf-stable in their ingredients, were common in Canadian and American promotional cookbooks through the early twentieth century.