Pudding
One cup of chopped suet Two and one-half cups of flour One cup of molasses One cup of sweet milk One-half teaspoon of Larkin Nutmeg One teaspoon of Larkin Soda One-half teaspoon of Larkin Table Salt One pound of English walnuts (chopped) One-fourth pound of figs (chopped) Steam two and one-half hours.
A plain steamed suet pudding of the kind that appeared at the end of a winter dinner, leavened by the reaction between molasses and soda. The method is only sketched in the original, so most of the work here is filling in the vessel, the water and the yield.
- The hinge: steam, not bakeThis makes a large quantity of batter, enough to fill a 3-quart mold two-thirds full or to divide between two smaller basins. Grease the mold, cover it tightly with a lid or a doubled sheet of foil tied down, and set it on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water reaching halfway up the mold. Keep the water at a bare simmer and top it up with more boiling water as it falls; if the pot boils dry the pudding scorches.
- Larkin-branded ingredientsLarkin Nutmeg, Soda and Table Salt were the mail-order grocery line this book was written to sell. Read them as plain ground nutmeg, baking soda and salt in the quantities given.
- SuetBeef suet, the hard fat from around the kidneys, grated or finely chopped rather than melted. Butchers will still order it and many supermarkets sell shredded suet; frozen butter grated on the coarse side of a box grater gives a heavier but workable pudding.
- Sweet milkOrdinary fresh whole milk. The word distinguishes it from the soured or buttermilk that older recipes often called for, and matters here because the acidity for the soda comes entirely from the molasses.
- MolassesUse unsulphured dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and will fight the figs. It is the only sweetener in the pudding, so it also sets the color and most of the flavor.
- A pound of walnuts is ambiguousThe original does not say whether the pound is in the shell or shelled. A pound of shelled walnuts is a very large amount of nut for this quantity of batter; around half a pound (about 2 cups chopped) gives a pudding that still holds together, and is likely what a cook buying nuts in the shell would have ended up with.
- Batter consistencyTwo and a half cups of flour against two cups of liquid gives a thick, spoonable batter, not a pourable one. Stir the soda into the molasses last and get the pudding into the mold promptly, before the leavening spends itself.
- Timing and donenessTwo and a half hours is right for a single mold of this size. A skewer into the center should come out clean and the pudding should be pulling slightly from the sides; let it stand ten minutes before turning out.
- Yield and servingServes eight to ten in the small wedges these puddings were meant for. It expects a sauce — hard sauce, a thin vanilla or lemon sauce, or plain cream — since on its own it is dense and only moderately sweet.
Steamed suet puddings were the standard cold-weather dessert of the nineteenth-century English-speaking kitchen, and this one is the everyday cousin of the Christmas plum pudding: same suet, same molasses, same long steam, but figs and walnuts in place of the brandy, candied peel and hoard of currants. The branded ingredients place the book squarely in its commercial context ffalo built a mail-order business selling soap and groceries direct to households, and its recipe pamphlets were written so that every line pointed back to something in the catalogue. Suet puddings did fade from American tables, though the reasons are a matter of speculation rather than record: one might guess at central heating, gas ranges and packaged cake mixes making a two-and-a-half-hour dessert on top of the stove seem like an odd use of a burner, or at beef suet becoming harder to find in the ordinary grocery order.