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Graham Pudding (Mrs Ruby Treptow C graham)
Mrs. Ruby Treptow. 1½ C graham flour 1/2 C white flour 1 C molasses or Karo syrup 1/2 C sweet milk 2 t baking powder 1 C raisins Pinch salt Add chopped nuts if desired and steam two hours. Serve hot with Mrs. Ruby Treptow. sauce. 2 C graham flour 1 C sour milk 1 C molasses 1 C raisins
A plain steamed molasses pudding of the sort church cookbooks printed by the dozen. The typesetting has run two of Mrs. Treptow's contributions together, so read the ingredient lists carefully before you start.
- Two recipes, one entryThe first list (graham and white flour, sweet milk, baking powder) is complete and workable. What follows the broken line "Serve hot with ... sauce." is the beginning of a second recipe — graham flour, sour milk, molasses, raisins — whose leavening, salt and method were dropped in printing. A sour-milk batter of this period would normally have carried soda, commonly about a teaspoon to the cup; do not attempt the second list as printed.
- Graham flourCoarse whole-wheat flour, stone-ground with the bran and germ left in. Modern whole-wheat flour is the nearest substitute; it absorbs liquid more slowly, so let the batter stand five minutes before you judge its thickness.
- Karo syrupLight corn syrup, sold under the same name today. It is far less assertive than molasses and gives a paler, sweeter, blander pudding — molasses is the better choice if you want the flavor the recipe is named for.
- Steaming vesselGrease a 2-quart mold or pudding basin, fill it about two-thirds, cover tightly with a lid or foil tied down, and set it on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water reaching halfway up the sides. Keep the water at a bare simmer and top it up as it falls; two hours is right for this volume.
- Testing for donenessA skewer to the center should come out clean and the pudding should have pulled slightly from the sides. Underbaked steamed puddings sink and turn gummy at the base, and there is no rescuing them once unmolded.
- The missing sauceThe intended sauce is not given. A period hard sauce (creamed butter and confectioners' sugar) or a simple hot vanilla or lemon sauce is the sort of thing a cook of the period would have reached for.
- YieldServes six to eight. Leftovers reheat well by re-steaming for about fifteen minutes.
Steamed puddings like this one belong to a long line of boiled and steamed sweets that predate reliable home ovens: a mold in a kettle of simmering water needed only a steady stovetop, and the same pot could be doing other work. The graham flour points to Sylvester Graham, the nineteenth-century American temperance and dietary reformer whose name became attached to unsifted whole-wheat flour and, later, to the cracker; by the time this book was compiled the flour was sold widely and carried a mild aura of wholesomeness. Molasses and raisins were the cheap sweetening and cheap fruit of a Midwestern pantry, and the alternative of Karo syrup — a branded corn syrup that spread rapidly through American home baking in the early twentieth century — marks the recipe as belonging to that transitional moment. The double attribution to Mrs. Treptow is typical of church cookbooks, where one contributor often sent in several favorites and the volunteer typist ran them together.