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Steamed Nut and Fig Pudding
1 pound figs 1/2 cup nuts 2 cups stale bread crumbs 2 cups rich cream 3/4 cup sugar 1 teaspoon salt 4 eggs Chop the figs and the nuts. Beat the yolks and add the sugar and salt to them. Mix bread crumbs, figs, nuts, cream, and salt; then mix in yolks and sugar, and lastly fold in the whites beaten dry. Steam four hours.
A fig-and-cream steamed pudding of the custard type rather than the suet type, so it sets soft and sliceable rather than dense. The main adjustments are the vessel, the water level, and the length of the steam.
- The salt is one teaspoon totalThe method calls for salt twice, first with the yolks and again with the crumbs. Use the single teaspoon from the ingredient list, divided or added all at once; it is not two teaspoons.
- FigsDried figs are the likely intent; a pound gives roughly three cups chopped. Snip off the hard stem ends and chop with an oiled knife or in a food processor with a spoonful of the sugar to keep the pieces from clumping.
- Rich creamHeavy cream, around 36 percent fat. Modern light cream or half-and-half will set more loosely and weep slightly under long steaming.
- Stale bread crumbsSoft crumbs torn from day-old white bread, loosely packed, not dry commercial crumbs. Dry crumbs absorb far more cream and give a pasty pudding.
- The mold and the steamerThe mixture comes to well over two quarts, so use a three-quart buttered pudding mold, or divide it between two smaller ones, filling no more than three-quarters and covering tightly with a lid or with buttered foil tied down. Set it on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water reaching halfway up the mold, and keep the water at a bare simmer, topping up with boiling water as it falls.
- Four hours is generousFour hours is generous for a pudding of this type. Start testing at two and a half hours: a skewer into the center should come out clean and the pudding should feel set rather than sloshing when the mold is nudged.
- NutsWalnuts, pecans or almonds all suit the figs. Toast them briefly before chopping; the long moist heat leaves untoasted nuts bland.
- Unmolding and yieldRest the pudding in its mold ten minutes before turning out, or it will crack. It should serve eight to ten. The recipe names no sauce; hard sauce or a thin pouring custard would be the usual accompaniment for a pudding of this kind.
Steamed puddings were a staple of the sweet course in American and British households well into the twentieth century, and cookbooks of this stripe divide them roughly into two families: the heavy suet-and-flour puddings descended from plum pudding, and the lighter crumb-and-egg puddings like this one, which are closer to a baked custard held together by bread. Figs commonly reached the kitchen dried and pressed in boxes, keeping well and standing in for fresh fruit through winter, which is why they turn up alongside dates and raisins in the pudding chapters. The absence of flour and suet here, and the use of cream and four eggs, suggests a comparatively rich version, and steaming rather than baking was a common choice at a time when a stovetop pot was easier to regulate than an oven temperature.