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Blackberry Slump or Steamed Pudding
1. Rub together two cups flour, one-half cup sugar, twothirds cup milk, one egg, a tablespoon of butter, and two cups of berries. Sift through flour two teaspoons baking powder and pinch of salt. Stir in berries last thing, then place in buttered mould or bucket; cover well and steam two hours.
Serve hot with milk or sweet sauce. 2. Fill tight-covered vessel half full of hot, stewed berries; cover with biscuit dough; cover tight and bake, or steam in boiling water.
Two versions of the same New England idea: a sweetened biscuit batter cooked with berries in a closed vessel over water rather than in an oven. The first is a steamed pudding; the second is a true slump, dough dropped over hot fruit.
- The hinge: keep the steam inBoth versions depend on a tightly covered mould so the batter cooks in trapped moisture. Butter the mould, fill it no more than two-thirds so the pudding can rise, and lay buttered parchment or foil over the top before clamping the lid or tying it down with string.
- "Rub together" is loose wordingDo not literally rub in the berries. Cream the butter with the sugar, beat in the egg and milk, then fold in the flour sifted with the baking powder and salt, and add the berries at the very end as the recipe itself says.
- Baking powder proportionTwo teaspoons to two cups of flour is a modest amount by modern standards as well as period ones, about a teaspoon per cup. Modern double-acting powder releases its gas in two stages rather than all at once, but the measure can be taken as written.
- Steaming setupStand the mould on a rack in a deep pot, pour in boiling water to come halfway up the sides, cover the pot, and keep it at a bare simmer. Top up with boiling water as it evaporates so the pot never runs dry.
- Two hours is realA pudding of this size genuinely needs the full two hours; the centre steams slowly. It is done when a skewer comes out clean and the top springs back. Let it stand ten minutes before turning out.
- "Bucket" and "tight-covered vessel"A pudding basin of a quart and a half or more (the batter with two cups of berries will overfill a single quart), or a lidded metal pail, suits the first version. For the second, a covered casserole or enamelled pot with a well-fitting lid is closest to what was meant.
- BerriesFresh or frozen blackberries both work; frozen should go in still frozen and unthawed so they do not bleed the batter grey. The half cup of sugar is modest, so taste the fruit and judge.
- Oven temperature for the second versionThe recipe says only "bake" and specifies no oven heat. Around 350F for roughly 40 minutes will cook biscuit dough through over hot fruit. The fruit must be genuinely hot when the dough goes on, or the underside stays raw.
- Yield and sauceThe steamed pudding serves six or so. "Sweet sauce" was used loosely for butter-and-sugar sauces, whether stiff or thin and pouring; a custard or simply cold heavy cream will do, and the recipe itself offers plain milk.
Slump belongs to a small family of New England fruit-and-dough puddings that also includes grunt, a way of getting a hot fruit dessert out of a covered pot when an oven was unreliable or absent. The names are onomatopoeic and regional rather than technical: a slump is generally said to be so called because it collapses on the plate, and grunt for the noise the fruit makes under the lid, though the etymologies are traditional rather than documented. Blackberries suited the method because they were gathered wild in quantity in late summer and cooked down readily.