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Sponge Pudding (No. 1)
1 cup chopped suet 1 cup molasses 1 cup milk 3½ cups Five Roses flour 2 eggs 1 cup raisins 1 cup currants Citron and spice to taste 1 teaspoon soda (beaten in molasses).
Note- cup butter may be used instead of the suet in above recipe. Steam 3 hours, and serve with wine sauce. If suet is used, a pinch of salt should be added. Many prefer this to a plum pudding, because it is not so rich. 3 eggs
A steamed molasses pudding of the plainer sort, sitting somewhere between a plum pudding and a gingerbread. Nothing here is difficult, but the mould, the water level and the egg count all need attention.
- The egg count is contradictoryThe list gives 2 eggs and then ends with a stray "3 eggs" — almost certainly a compositor's error carried over from a neighbouring recipe. Two eggs is consistent with the proportions; use two and beat them well.
- Soda in the molassesThis is the hinge. Stirring the teaspoon of soda into the molasses first lets it react with the acid there and foam up before the flour goes in, which is what lifts the pudding. Do it last, mix quickly, and get the pudding into the steamer straight away.
- SuetBeef suet, finely chopped or grated, and best done cold. Butcher's suet is firmer and less waxy than the boxed shredded product; if you use the butter alternative the pudding is softer and less "plum-pudding" in character. Add the pinch of salt with suet, as directed — suet is unsalted, butter usually is not.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian hard-wheat flour, milled by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company. Ordinary all-purpose works; 3½ cups makes a stiff batter, which is right for a steamed pudding.
- Citron and spiceCitron is candied citron peel, sold alongside candied mixed peel and generally substituted for it. 'Spice to taste' is left entirely open; a mix along the lines of a teaspoon of cinnamon with half-teaspoons of nutmeg, ginger and cloves suits a molasses pudding, but those amounts are a modern suggestion, not the book's.
- SteamingFill a greased 2-quart pudding basin or mould no more than two-thirds full, cover tightly with pleated parchment and foil or a floured cloth, and stand it on a rack in a pot with boiling water reaching halfway up. Keep the water at a steady simmer and top it up from the kettle over the three hours; if it boils dry the pudding scorches and the pot may crack.
- Wine sauceThe page says only 'wine sauce'. Sauces under that name in this period were generally sweet pouring sauces of butter, sugar and wine, thinned with a little hot water and sometimes thickened. Hard sauce or a plain custard serves the same purpose.
- Yield and keepingAbout 8 to 10 servings. It keeps a week wrapped and refrigerated, and reheats by steaming for 30 to 40 minutes — better the second day, like most puddings of this family.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and distributed to Canadian households that bought its flour, with recipes contributed by women who used it. A pudding like this one — suet, molasses, soda, dried fruit, no brandy and no ground almonds — is the everyday cousin of the Christmas plum pudding, and the recipe's own closing remark, that many prefer it "because it is not so rich," tells you where it belonged in the year. Molasses remained a common sweetener in Canadian and Maritime baking well after refined sugar was widely available, and its acidity pairs with soda to raise a batter too heavy for eggs alone.