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Mrs Clarke's Plum Pudding
Use one quart of bread crumbs, one-half cup of molasses, one-half cup of sugar, one cup of raisins, a small piece of citron, one nutmeg, one teaspoon of cinnamon, one-half teaspoon of cloves, three eggs, one cup of sour milk and one-half cup of suet. Steam for three hours.
A plain, thrifty steamed pudding of the bread-crumb type rather than the rich brandied Christmas sort. The instructions assume a cook who already owns a pudding mould and knows how to keep a kettle at a simmer, so the gaps are worth filling.
- The missing leaveningSour milk in a pudding of this era was often paired with saleratus (baking soda), which the acid activates, and the molasses would reinforce it. As written there is nothing to lift the batter, and the result will be dense. Half to one teaspoon of baking soda stirred into the crumbs may well be what was assumed, though the recipe as printed omits it.
- Sour milkNot spoiled milk from the refrigerator, but raw milk soured naturally. Use buttermilk, or a cup of milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes.
- A quart of bread crumbsSoft crumbs from stale, not dried, bread, measured loose in a quart measure — roughly 4 cups, about 6 to 8 oz. Dry packaged crumbs are far denser and will make a brick.
- SuetHalf a cup of beef suet, finely chopped or grated, about 2 oz. Ask a butcher for kidney suet, or use packaged shredded suet. Frozen suet grates far more easily than fresh. Cold grated butter will substitute, though the texture is softer.
- One nutmegA whole nutmeg grated yields roughly 2 to 3 teaspoons — a very assertive amount by current taste. Halving it may suit modern palates better.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold at holiday time; "a small piece" means about 2 tablespoons chopped. Candied orange or lemon peel does the same job.
- The steaming itselfButter a mould or pudding basin of at least 2 quarts (the batter is bulky), fill it no more than two-thirds, and cover tightly with a lid or with pleated foil tied down, or the condensing steam will waterlog the top. Set it on a rack in a covered pot with boiling water reaching halfway up the mould, and top up with boiling water as it evaporates — three hours is a long time to run a pot dry.
- Doneness and yieldA skewer to the centre should come out clean and the pudding should pull slightly from the sides. Let it stand ten minutes before turning out. Serves six to eight, and it wants a sauce — hard sauce, a thin lemon sauce, or plain cream.
- KeepingSteamed puddings improve after a day or two and reheat well: return the covered mould to steam for 30 to 45 minutes, or slice and warm portions covered.
Steamed puddings of this kind are the frugal descendants of the boiled plum pudding, which in Britain began as a savoury pottage thickened with bread and suet and gradually shed the meat for dried fruit and spice over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. "Plum" is the older English word for raisin, which is why there are no plums in the recipe. What distinguishes an American household version like this one is what it leaves out: no brandy, no flour, no long ageing, and only a cup of raisins and a scrap of citron carrying the whole idea of luxury. The bread crumbs and suet are the point: crumbs from a stale loaf, the fat trimmed off a roast, and souring milk that would otherwise be thrown away. Recipes credited to a named contributor were the ordinary currency of turn-of-the-century household magazines and their cookbooks.