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Amherst Pudding
3 cupfuls of flour. 1 cupful of suet. 1 cupful of milk. 1 cupful of molasses. 2 cupfuls of raisins. 1 teaspoonful of salt. 1 teaspoonful of cloves and the same of cinnamon. 1/2 teaspoonful of soda, dissolved in milk. To be boiled three hours in a coarse bag, and eaten with wine sauce.--Mrs. W.
A plain boiled suet pudding of the New England-into-Virginia type: no eggs, no sugar beyond the molasses, and a long steam in a cloth. The proportions are sound, but the method assumes a kitchen that boiled things all afternoon.
- The hinge: keep the water boilingA cloth pudding must stay at a steady rolling boil for the full three hours, topped up with boiling water from a kettle so the pot never goes off the boil. Adding cold water or letting it slacken gives a heavy, sodden centre that no extra time will fix.
- The coarse bagA square of unbleached cotton or a doubled length of cheesecloth, scalded, wrung out, then floured on the inside so a skin forms and the batter cannot seep through. Tie it loosely, leaving room for the pudding to swell. A greased and floured pudding basin with a pleated foil-and-paper lid, set on a trivet in a covered pot of simmering water, does the same job with less drama.
- SuetBeef suet, chopped or grated fine, not melted. Packaged shredded suet works directly; a butcher's block suet is easier to grate if frozen first. Frozen grated butter will substitute at the cost of a denser crumb, since suet's high melting point is what opens the texture.
- Molasses and sodaUse unsulphured molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter in this quantity. The half teaspoon of soda is there to react with the molasses' acidity; dissolve it in the milk as directed and get the pudding into the water promptly, before the lift is spent.
- RaisinsTwo cupfuls is roughly 10 oz. Toss them in a little of the measured flour before mixing so they stay suspended rather than sinking to what will become the bottom.
- ConsistencyThis makes a stiff batter, closer to a thick drop batter than a dough. If the flour is very dry, a few extra spoonfuls of milk are in order; the mixture should fall heavily from the spoon.
- Wine sauceA common period sauce is butter, sugar, and sherry or Madeira beaten together over hot water until creamy, sometimes with a little nutmeg. A hard sauce of creamed butter, powdered sugar and brandy is another frequent partner.
- Yield and keepingServes eight to ten. It reheats better than it keeps fresh: wrap and steam slices for ten minutes, or microwave briefly, to bring back the moisture.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by some 250 Virginia housekeepers, is full of recipes signed only with an initial, and this is one of them. The name almost certainly points to Amherst County, in the Piedmont west of Lynchburg, rather than to Massachusetts — though the pudding itself is a New England form, the boiled suet-and-molasses pudding that spread through American cookbooks in the middle of the century as a cheap winter sweet. Nothing in it is expensive: flour, suet from the butchering, milk, molasses, and dried fruit, bound without eggs and sweetened without refined sugar. What marks it as a household recipe rather than a company one is the absence of eggs and brandy in the pudding itself; the luxury is all in the wine sauce poured over it at table. Boiled puddings of this kind held on in Southern kitchens long after cake ovens became reliable, partly because the technique needs only a pot and a fire.</a>