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Ginger Pudding
4 ozs. (4 heaping tablespoonfuls) preserved ginger 4 heaping tablespoonfuls chopped suet 4 ozs. (4 heaping tablespoonfuls) sugar 2 tablespoonfuls ginger syrup Pinch salt 1/4 teaspoonful grated nutmeg 3 eggs I heaping teaspoonful baking powder 3/4 pint (11/½ cups) milk 4 ozs. (4 heaping tablespoonfuls) flour 4 ozs. (1 cup) bread crumbs or cake crumbs Ginger sauce Chop the ginger and the suet and put them into a basin; then add the eggs well beaten and all the other ingredients. Mix together thoroughly, pour into a well-buttered casserole, cover with the lid or a buttered paper, and steam for two and a half hours. Serve with ginger sauce.
The sauce may be made as follows: Beat up the whites of two eggs to a stiff froth, add half a cupful of whipped cream, one tablespoonful of finely chopped ginger, and enough of the syrup to give it a strong flavor.
A late-Victorian style steamed suet pudding, adapted here for a lidded casserole standing in a pan of water. The measurements are the main obstacle: the book gives both weights and "heaping tablespoonfuls", and the two do not agree.
- Trust the ounces, not the spoonsFour ounces of flour is about one cup, four ounces of sugar about half a cup, and four ounces of chopped suet is roughly three-quarters of a cup packed. Four heaping tablespoons of any of these falls well short, so weigh if you can.
- The milk quantityThe garbled "3/4 pint (11/½ cups)" is 1 1/2 cups, an American pint being 16 fl oz. If you are working from a British text with a 20 oz pint, 3/4 pint would be closer to 1 3/4 cups; the batter is meant to be loose either way.
- Casserole means the potHere a casserole is a lidded cooking vessel (the recipe says "cover with the lid"), not a baked dish. Butter it well, fill no more than two-thirds, and set it on a rack or folded cloth in a deep pan with boiling water reaching halfway up the sides.
- Steaming, not bakingKeep the water at a bare simmer for the full two and a half hours and top it up with boiling water as it drops. Letting the pan boil dry is the usual way this pudding is ruined.
- Preserved gingerThis is stem ginger in heavy syrup, sold in jars and still widely available; the syrup called for is the liquid from that jar. Crystallised ginger is a workable substitute, but rinse off the surface sugar and use honey or a light sugar syrup in place of the two tablespoons of ginger syrup.
- SuetBeef suet from a butcher, chopped or grated fine and kept cold, is what the recipe assumes. Packaged shredded suet works directly; frozen grated butter is the nearest everyday substitute, though the crumb will be softer.
- Baking powder over a long steamA heaping teaspoon contributes most of its lift early on, before the batter sets; over two and a half hours' steaming its effect is limited. Mix and get it into the heat promptly rather than letting the batter stand.
- The raw-egg sauceThe ginger sauce is uncooked beaten egg white folded with whipped cream. If you are serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurised whites; the sauce will also slacken on standing, so make it just before the pudding comes out.
- Yield and donenessThe recipe gives no yield; a pudding of this size will serve roughly six. It is done when a skewer pushed to the centre comes out clean and the pudding has pulled slightly from the sides; let it stand five minutes before turning out.
Steamed suet puddings were a mainstay of English dessert cookery for generations, and ginger versions relied on preserved stem ginger imported in stoneware jars from Canton, a grocery item that had become widely available in household cookery books by the early twentieth century. What is notable here is the vessel: lidded fireproof casseroles were promoted in English and American cookbooks of this period as a single pot that could braise, bake and, as here, stand in a water bath in place of a cloth-tied pudding basin. The bread or cake crumbs are an older economy showing through, a way of using stale leftovers.