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Cherry Pudding (Cupfuls of flour cupfuls)
3 cupfuls of flour. 2 cupfuls of fruit. 1 cupful of molasses. 1 cupful of milk. 2 teaspoonfuls of cream tartar. 1 teaspoonful of soda, put in the flour. 1 cupful of suet.
Mix well, put in a buttered mould, and boil three hours and a half.--Miss E. T.
A boiled suet pudding of the plainest sort, leavened with molasses and a soda-and-cream-of-tartar pair rather than eggs. The hinge is the mould: it must be filled only two-thirds full, covered tightly, and kept in gently boiling water that never drops below the level of the batter.
- The mould and the potUse a pudding basin or lidded steamed-pudding mould of about 3 quarts (the mixture itself comes to roughly 2 quarts), buttered and filled two-thirds full to allow rise. Set it on a rack or folded cloth in a deep pot, add boiling water halfway up the sides, cover, and keep it at a bare simmer, topping up with boiling water as it evaporates.
- Boiling vs. steamingNineteenth-century "boiled" puddings in a mould were cooked in a pot of boiling water, sometimes immersed and sometimes part-submerged; either way a steady gentle boil rather than a furious one is what is wanted, and a modern cook can treat it as a water bath. Three and a half hours is genuine for a pudding of this size and density; it is not an overcautious old timing. Test with a skewer to the center.
- SuetOne cupful means about 5 oz of beef suet, shredded or grated fine and tossed with a spoonful of the flour so it stays separate. Butcher's suet is best; packaged shredded suet works. It should not be melted, since the pudding's texture depends on solid fat particles.
- Cream tartar and sodaTwo teaspoons cream of tartar with one of soda works out at roughly four teaspoons of modern baking powder, the cream of tartar being the acid that neutralises the soda. As written it is a large dose; sift it thoroughly through the flour, since a pocket of soda will taste soapy.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cooking molasses, not blackstrap, which is far more bitter than the table molasses of the period. The cream of tartar is the main acid for the soda, though the molasses contributes some acidity of its own.
- The cherriesThe recipe itself says only "2 cupfuls of fruit"; the title points to cherries, which in a Virginia household would most likely have been sour cherries, stoned, fresh or put up in jars. Fresh sweet cherries or thawed and well-drained frozen sour cherries both work; drain them well or the batter slackens and the pudding turns heavy.
- Flour and consistencyThree cupfuls is about 13 oz of all-purpose flour. With only one cupful of liquid plus the molasses, the mixture is a stiff drop batter rather than a pour; add a spoonful or two more milk if it will not fall from the spoon.
- Yield and servingServes eight. Turn it out hot and serve with a hard sauce, a pouring custard, or simply cream. Leftovers reheat well by steaming for twenty minutes.
Boiled and steamed suet puddings were the workhorse dessert of English and Anglo-American kitchens for centuries, and they survived in the American South long after ovens became common, partly because a pot over the fire needed no fuel management and no oven at all. Marion Cabell Tyree's Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878) is a compilation of contributions from Virginia housewives, which is why so many recipes carry initials like "Miss E. T." rather than full names, and why the same dish often appears in three or four versions with different proportions. Chemical leavening of this kind was widely available by the third quarter of the nineteenth century, and recipes using it sit alongside, rather than having simply displaced, the egg-raised and long-risen puddings of earlier books. Cherries were among the fruits established early in Virginia orchards, and a sour-cherry crop that came in all at once gave a household more fruit than it could eat fresh, so it went into puddings, pies, and preserving jars.