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Steamed Molasses Pudding
Mrs. Thos. Corlett. 1 t soda 1 C sweet milk 4 T shortening 1 C molasses 2 C flour 1 t cinnamon 1 t cloves Dissolve soda in cup of milk. Melt shortening, add molasses, milk with soda, flour, cinnamon and cloves. Turn into greased moulds and steam 2½ hours. Serve with Foamy Sauce. 1 C powdered sugar 1/4 C butter 1 egg, well beaten Foamy Sauce ¼ C boiling water 1 t vanilla Rub sugar and butter to a cream. Add egg and beat well. Just Edith E. Smith.
East Orange, N. J. before serving add boiling water and vanilla Mrs. C. E. Grummitt uses 1 C butter, 1 egg and 3 C flour in the above pudding.
A plain steamed molasses pudding of the sort that filled out a winter supper, paired with an uncooked egg sauce that no longer meets modern food-safety practice.
- The sauce is the problemFoamy Sauce is powdered sugar, butter and one whole raw egg, beaten and slackened with a small quantity of boiling water just before serving. That much water cannot bring a beaten egg anywhere near the 160F needed to kill Salmonella, and the sauce is served warm-to-tepid, which is the range in which any surviving bacteria multiply. If you want a sauce for a steamed pudding, use a current recipe built on a cooked custard base or on pasteurised egg.
- AbbreviationsC is a cup, T a tablespoon, t a teaspoon. Nothing here is a metric or apothecary measure.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured whole milk, named to distinguish it from the buttermilk or clabbered milk also kept in the kitchen. Ordinary whole milk is the equivalent.
- ShorteningHere this means lard or a hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Melted butter behaves much the same in a steamed batter, though it browns the crumb slightly more.
- Soda and molassesThere are no eggs in the pudding; all the lift comes from the teaspoon of soda reacting with the acid in the molasses. Dissolving the soda in the milk first, as directed, is what keeps it from streaking the batter, and the mixed batter should go into the moulds and onto the heat without standing about.
- Steaming timeThe stated duration is out of range and clearly a printing error. A pudding of this size in covered greased moulds, set on a rack over simmering water, is conventionally steamed one and a half to two hours; a single large mould takes longer than several small ones. Fill moulds no more than two-thirds full and keep the water at a bare simmer, topping it up with boiling water so the pan never runs dry.
- Doneness and yieldThe pudding is done when a skewer comes out clean and the top springs back. The batter makes roughly six to eight servings; unmould after five minutes' rest, or the crumb tears.
- The variant at the endMrs. Grummitt's version substitutes a full cup of butter for the four tablespoons of shortening, adds an egg, and raises the flour to three cups, producing a far richer, denser, cake-like pudding. Treat it as a separate recipe rather than a small adjustment.
Steamed puddings survived in American home cooking long after the open hearth disappeared because they asked almost nothing of the stove: a covered mould, a pot of simmering water, and an hour or two of inattention. Molasses gave the cheapest possible sweetening and, with soda, did the leavening as well, which is why molasses-and-spice puddings turn up in many community cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Books of this kind were assembled from signed contributions, and the signatures are part of the point: the credit to Mrs. Thos. Corlett, the alternative proportions credited to Mrs. C. E. Grummitt, and a contributor writing in from East Orange, New Jersey, record a group's collective practice rather than one cook's.