Home › Pudding Recipes › Date Pudding
Date Pudding
½ lb. stoned dates 3 ozs. (1/3 cup) rice 1 pint (2 cups) milk 2 tablespoonfuls chopped suet 3 ozs. (3 heaping tablespoonfuls) sugar 3 eggs 2 tablespoonfuls chopped citron peel A little grated nutmeg Wash the rice well, and put it into a casserole with sugar, and stir in the farina; cook, stirring frequently, for one hour.
Cool and add the eggs well beaten, the grated nutmeg, and the Sultana raisins. Mix thoroughly and bake in a moderate oven for half an hour.
The method here has clearly been mangled in typesetting: it calls for farina and Sultana raisins that never appear in the ingredient list, and never uses the dates, milk, suet or citron that do. Read the ingredients as authoritative and the instructions as a rough sketch, and the pudding works out as a baked rice pudding heavy with dried fruit.
- The missing liquidThe rice is to be cooked in the pint of milk with the sugar, not in nothing at all. "Stir in the farina" appears to be a misprint: there is no farina in the ingredient list.
- Dates for SultanasWherever the method says Sultana raisins, it most likely means the 1½ lb of stoned dates, chopped. The citron peel and suet are never mentioned in the method at all; the natural point for them is off the heat, before the eggs.
- What the casserole isHere the casserole must be a flameproof earthenware or fireproof glazed dish, since it goes directly on the burner and then into the oven. On a modern hob use a heat diffuser, or start the rice in a heavy saucepan and transfer to a baking dish.
- An hour of stirringAn hour on direct heat will scorch milk and rice in most modern pans. Keep the heat very low and stir often, or cook it covered in a 300F oven for the same time, until the grains are soft and the milk mostly absorbed.
- Cool before the eggsThe instruction to cool is the hinge. Three eggs beaten into hot rice will scramble into threads rather than set the pudding; let it drop to lukewarm, or temper the eggs with a spoonful of the hot rice first.
- Moderate oven350F. Half an hour will set the custard and colour the top; if the dish is deep, give it closer to 40 minutes and test that the centre is just firm.
- Suet and citronChopped beef suet is sold shredded by butchers and online; a firm vegetable shortening is the usual stand-in. Candied citron peel is the thick-cut peel of the citron fruit, distinct from the mixed candied peel of orange and lemon.
- YieldWith 1½ lb of dates this is a substantial pudding serving eight to ten. It is very sweet as written; the 3 oz of sugar can be cut without harm to the set.
Baked rice puddings enriched with eggs, suet and dried fruit sit on the boundary between the medieval sweet pottage and the Victorian nursery pudding, and nineteenth-century versions often differ only in which dried fruit is used. Dates are generally said to have become widely available in British and American kitchens in the later nineteenth century, and recipes using them seem to have been more common by the century's end than fifty years earlier. Citron peel and grated nutmeg are the older element here, the standard seasoning of English boiled and baked puddings since the eighteenth century. The idea that a single earthenware casserole could take a dish from the burner to the oven to the table was part of an early twentieth-century enthusiasm for fireproof ware sold on the promise of fewer pans and less washing up.