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Dutch Pudding
Mix well together. 1/2 C Cream of wheat 4 T cocoa ½ t salt Add 3 C boiling water slowly-stirring constantly. Cook in double boiler 30 minutes. When cooked 20 minutes, add 2/3 C granulated sugar 1 T butter When taken from the fire, add 1 well beaten egg. When partly cold add 1 C raisins 1 C nutmeats Serve with whipped cream.
Mrs. Charles Greenwood.
A cocoa-flavoured farina mould of the sort that filled out church-supper dessert tables. It is straightforward once two typographical oddities in the original are read correctly.
- "12 t salt" is a misprintTwelve teaspoons of salt in three cups of water would be inedible. Read it as 1/2 teaspoon, which is the standard proportion for this quantity of cereal.
- Cream of WheatThe same farina product sold today, but buy a plain stovetop version rather than instant or the flavoured sachets. Quantities here assume uncooked granules.
- C, T and tC is a cup, T a tablespoon, t a teaspoon. Cocoa means unsweetened cocoa powder, not drinking chocolate; four tablespoons is about 20 g.
- The hinge: add the water slowlyFarina and cocoa both clump the instant they hit boiling water. Pour in a thin stream while whisking hard, and finish the mixing before the pan goes over the double boiler.
- The double boilerThirty minutes over simmering water is not excessive for farina cooked this way; it is what gives the pudding its smooth, set texture. Stir every few minutes and keep the water below the upper pan from boiling dry.
- The eggBeat it well first and add it in a stream while stirring, or it will scramble in streaks. Residual heat from the hot pudding will thicken it, but do not assume the egg is fully cooked by it.
- NutmeatsSimply shelled nuts, chopped. Walnuts or pecans are the likely intention; toast them first, since the recipe gives them no cooking.
- Setting and yieldThe original does not say, but the finished quantity is substantial: allow at least a litre and a half of mould, or six to eight dishes. Chill until cold; press plastic wrap on the surface to stop a skin forming.
Church and club cookbooks of the early twentieth century are full of cereal puddings like this one, and the name "Dutch" attached itself loosely to any number of American dishes with no particular claim to the Netherlands, often said to come by way of Deutsch and the Pennsylvania German kitchen. What is genuinely of its moment is the Cream of Wheat: a milled farina sold in branded packets from the 1890s onward and advertised heavily as a wholesome breakfast, and it appears here as a cheap thickener for a moulded dessert in place of the older cornstarch or arrowroot blancmange. Cocoa powder had become similarly ordinary and inexpensive by then. The result is a dessert built almost entirely from pantry staples, stretched with raisins and nuts and dressed up with whipped cream at the table, which is precisely the arithmetic a contributor to a church fundraiser would have been working with.