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Carrot Pudding (C ground raw carrots C Irish)
1 C ground raw carrots 1. C Irish raw potatoes 1 C currants 3/4 C butter 1 C flour 1 C sugar 3 eggs 1t soda 1 t salt 1 t cloves 1 t nutmeg 1 t cinnamon Little allspice 1 C raisins Cream butter and sugar; add yolks of eggs, then flour (with soda sifted in), fruit, vegetables, spices and salt. Last stiffly beaten whites of eggs. Steam three hours. Serve hot with hard sauce. 1 C powdered sugar 1/2 C butter.
Hard Sauce 1 egg white (beaten stiff) or whipped cream Mrs. P. G. Osborn.
A steamed spice pudding in the plum-pudding line, thickened with root vegetables rather than breadcrumbs or suet. The recipe assumes you know how to rig a steamer, so that is where most of the work of translation lies.
- The abbreviationsC is one cup, t is one teaspoon. The second line is 1 cup of raw potato; the period in "1. C" is a typographic artifact.
- Irish potatoesOrdinary white potatoes, the name used to distinguish them from sweet potatoes, which in some regions were called simply "potatoes." Peel and grate them raw, and add them with the fruit as directed so they do not sit and oxidize.
- Ground carrots"Ground" here most likely means put through a food chopper. The fine side of a box grater or a few pulses in a food processor gives much the same thing; avoid pureeing, which makes the batter watery.
- Steaming setupButter a pudding mold or bowl of at least 2 1/2 to 3 quarts (the batter comes to something close to 2 quarts) and fill it no more than two-thirds, since the pudding rises. Cover tightly with a lid or foil tied down, set on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water halfway up the sides, and keep it at a bare simmer for the full three hours, topping up with boiling water as it drops. A skewer to the center should come out clean.
- The sodaA full teaspoon of soda with no buttermilk, molasses or other acid in the batter is more than it needs and will read soapy. Half a teaspoon is plenty, or substitute 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder.
- Hard sauceCream the butter, beat in the powdered sugar, then fold in the stiff egg white. The white is never cooked, so use whipped cream instead if you are serving anyone who should avoid raw egg; the recipe already offers that as the alternative.
- Yield and servingServes eight to ten. It is meant hot, unmolded onto a plate, with the sauce melting over it. Leftovers reheat well set back in the steamer for 20 to 30 minutes.
Steamed carrot puddings are English in origin, long predating their life in American community cookbooks, and they persisted in such collections long after suet had dropped out of most home kitchens. Grated carrot and raw potato do two jobs at once: they sweeten and they hold moisture. The recipe's structure is a familiar one ypseparated eggs, a battery of sweet spices, three hours over water rather than in an oven y and the hard sauce, essentially sweetened butter, is the sort of thing that was expected to arrive at the table cold against a hot pudding. Its appearance here, signed by a named contributor, is typical of the compiled community cookbook, where each dish carries a name and a household reputation with it.