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Currant Pudding
1 pound currants. 1 teaspoonful soda. 1 teaspoonful salt. Nutmeg to suit the taste. Citron will improve the flavor. Eat with wine sauce.--Mrs.Dr.E.
This is one of the many contributor entries in Housekeeping in Old Virginia that assumes the cook already knows the form of the dish. What is printed here is a flavoring scheme, not a complete formula, and it needs a boiled-pudding base supplied from elsewhere before it can be made.
- What is missingThere is no flour, fat, egg, liquid or sweetening listed, and no method at all. Contemporary boiled currant puddings of this type run roughly to a pound of flour, half a pound of chopped suet or butter, two to four eggs, and enough milk or buttermilk to make a stiff batter, with the pound of fruit stirred in last.
- Currants means dried currantsIn a nineteenth-century American cookbook, unqualified "currants" are dried Zante currants, the small seedless raisins, not fresh red or black currants off the bush. A pound is about three cups; wash and dry them, then toss with a spoonful of the flour so they do not sink.
- The soda needs an acidA teaspoon of soda with no cream of tartar or baking powder suggests the intended liquid was sour milk or buttermilk. With sweet milk the pudding may taste soapy and rise poorly. If you use fresh milk, use baking powder in place of the soda, roughly two to three teaspoons.
- CitronCandied citron, the thick-cut preserved peel sold at holiday baking time, not the citrus fruit. Two to four ounces, finely chopped, is a reasonable proportion against a pound of currants.
- NutmegGrate it whole; pre-ground nutmeg loses most of its volatile oil within months. Half to a whole nutmeg suits a pudding of this size.
- How it was cookedPuddings like this were tied in a floured cloth or packed into a buttered mold with a lid and boiled or steamed in a covered pot of simmering water for two to three hours, the water kept topped up and never allowed to go off the boil. Modern practice is the same, in a covered basin set on a rack, or two to three hours in a steamer.
- Wine sauceThe standard version is butter and sugar creamed together, thinned over hot water with sherry or Madeira and often a beaten egg, served warm and thin enough to pour. It supplies much of the sweetness of the dish, since the recipe as printed lists no sugar.
- YieldA pudding built on a pound of flour and a pound of fruit serves eight to ten. It reheats well by re-steaming.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, edited by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in the late 1870s, gathered contributions from a large number of Virginia housewives, and the entries are signed with initials or a married name in exactly the manner of "Mrs. Dr. E." here. That collaborative method explains the shape of this page: contributors wrote down what distinguished their pudding, apparently on the assumption that a reader could already make a plain boiled pudding without being told. Boiled and steamed puddings in a cloth were English in origin and stayed on Southern tables long after the Civil War because they demanded no oven and no precise heat, only a covered pot kept simmering, which suited a kitchen working over an open hearth or a temperamental wood range. Dried currants, candied citron and imported wine for the sauce were all shelf-stable goods bought in, and their appearance in a household recipe suggests a dish for company or a holiday rather than an ordinary weekday.