Fig Pudding
One cup of figs (chopped) One cup of sweet milk One cup of molasses One and one-half cups of Graham flour One and one-half teaspoons of Larkin Soda Steam three hours and serve with a sauce.
NUT
A plain steamed pudding of the eggless, butterless sort that filled out a winter table cheaply. The batter is loose, the leavening comes entirely from soda reacting with molasses, and the whole thing lives or dies by steady, gentle steam.
- Keep the steam gentle and constantSet the covered mold on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water reaching halfway up its side, and keep the water at a bare simmer for the full three hours, topping up with boiling water as it falls. A hard boil drives water into the pudding and a dry pot scorches the bottom.
- Larkin SodaA house-brand bicarbonate of soda sold by the Larkin Company of Buffalo with its soap and premium club orders. Plain baking soda is the same thing, measure for measure.
- Graham flourCoarse whole-wheat flour milled with the bran and germ, named for Sylvester Graham. Modern stone-ground whole-wheat flour is the closest match; ordinary whole-wheat works but gives a smoother crumb.
- Sweet milk and molasses"Sweet" means fresh rather than soured -- whole milk. Use unsulphured molasses; sulphured or blackstrap will read harsh and bitter against the figs.
- The soda is heavy-handedThe soda is generous -- One and a half teaspoons to a cup and a half of flour is on the heavy side even for a molasses batter, and surplus soda can taste faintly soapy and darken the crumb. A teaspoon is nearer modern practice.
- FigsDried figs, stemmed and chopped small. Hard ones can be softened in warm water for ten minutes and drained, or the pudding will have dry pockets.
- SaltThere is none in the list. A quarter teaspoon lifts both the molasses and the fruit.
- Mold and yieldGrease a 1.5 to 2 quart pudding mold or basin, fill no more than two-thirds, and cover tightly with a lid or pleated foil tied down. Serves six, turned out hot.
- The sauceNo sauce is specified. A hard sauce of creamed butter and powdered sugar, or a thin lemon or vanilla pudding sauce, would suit.
- That trailing "NUT"Almost certainly the beginning of the next entry's title carried over, not an ingredient. Chopped walnuts are nonetheless a reasonable addition, half a cup or so.
Steamed puddings survived in American cookbooks long after the open hearth disappeared because they asked nothing of an oven -- a covered mold and a kettle of simmering water would do, which mattered in a kitchen where the range was already committed to something else. This one is a thrift recipe in the Graham-flour tradition: no eggs, no butter, no sugar beyond the molasses, with dried figs supplying both sweetness and body. The reference to Larkin Soda dates it to the era of the Larkin Company's mail-order clubs, when Buffalo-made soap and grocery staples were shipped with premiums and promotional cookery pamphlets, and recipes were written to name the brand in the ingredient list. Figs themselves had become an ordinary pantry item by then, dried and pressed in blocks from California and the Mediterranean and cheap enough to chop by the cupful.