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Fig Snow for Filling
Mix fig pulp (fresh or steamed, or stewed) with whipped cream or meringue as for banana filling for Banana Layer Cake.
FIG PUDDING OR PIE (Very Simple) Cut fine one-half pound fresh or dried figs and simmer half an hour in three-fourths pint of water, a dessertspoonful of sugar being added when nearly done. Remove and cool, when add the well-beaten yolks of two eggs. Place in a pudding or pie dish and bake in moderate oven until the yolks are set sufficiently, then place on top a meringue made of the whites of the eggs and two tablespoonfuls of sugar. Let this brown and remove to cool. FIG SUET PUDDING (An English Recipe) Chop fine six ounces of suet in three-fourths pound of flour, adding a well-beaten egg, three-fourths cup of sugar, and sufficient milk to form a smooth dough. Roll out half an inch thick and sprinkle on it one pound fine-chopped figs. Roll this up and tie in a pudding cloth, place in boiling water, and boil for two hours. (A little nutmeg may be used for flavouring.) A
Three fig preparations run together in one entry, in the compressed style of a period fruit manual. The measurements are Anglo-American of about 1900 and need translating before you start.
- DessertspoonfulAn intermediate spoon between teaspoon and tablespoon, reckoned at two teaspoons. The sugar here is a seasoning for the figs, not a set quantity that governs texture, so approximation is safe.
- Three-fourths pintA US pint is 16 fl oz, so this is 1 1/2 cups of water for half a pound of figs. If the book's compiler was working from an imperial pint the figure is closer to 1 3/4 cups; either way the aim is figs soft enough to break down with a spoon, so top up if the pan runs dry.
- Moderate ovenAround 350F, the usual modern reading of the term. The pie is baked only until the yolk-thickened fig mixture sets, which in a shallow dish is likely to be twenty to thirty minutes, then the meringue goes on and browns in another ten minutes or so. Judge by the dish rather than the clock.
- SuetBeef or mutton kidney fat, sold shredded and floured in Britain and increasingly hard to find fresh in the US. Ask a butcher for kidney suet and grate it frozen; frozen grated butter behaves similarly in a boiled pudding, though the crumb is less open.
- Dried figs need soakingDried figs -- modern dried figs may be drier and harder than the semi-soft ones this book assumes, and soaking them in hot water for half an hour before chopping does no harm. But the pudding is boiled in a cloth for two hours, and that will soften them a good deal in any case.
- The pudding clothScald the cloth, wring it, flour the inside heavily, and tie it loosely enough to let the dough swell by about a third. Keep the water at a steady boil and topped up for the full two hours; if the pan goes off the boil the suet stiffens and the pudding turns heavy.
- Raw whites in the Fig SnowThe filling is unbaked. A meringue folded in raw leaves uncooked egg white in a cake that may sit at room temperature; use pasteurized whites, or take the whipped cream option the recipe offers first.
- YieldThe pie will serve roughly four to six. The suet pudding, at three-quarters of a pound of flour plus a pound of figs, is substantial enough for eight or so, and would have been turned out of the cloth and sliced. The recipe itself says nothing about accompaniments.
Figs reached American kitchens in this period chiefly in dried form, pressed into blocks or strung in rings from Smyrna and, increasingly after the 1890s, from California, where Adriatic and later Smyrna-type plantings were being established in the San Joaquin Valley. Fruit manuals of the era often give figs a chapter of their own rather than a line, at a time when the California crop was expanding. The suet pudding, correctly labelled English here, belongs to the same family as the plum and fig puddings boiled in a floured cloth at Christmas, and fig pudding is often linked to the "figgy pudding" of the carol, though the word figgy in the West Country was used loosely for raisin puddings too. "Snow" as a dish name is older than this book by a long way, an English term for fruit or cream whipped white with egg whites, and by 1900 it had drifted into the vocabulary of cake fillings.