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Steamed Berry Pudding
For a simple berry pudding beat 2 eggs, add 1 cupful of milk, ¼ of a teaspoonful of salt, 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar and 1 cupful of flour.
Beat in 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter, 2 teaspoonfuls of baking-powder and enough more flour to make a very thick batter. Last of all stir in 1½ cupfuls of berries which have been floured. Turn into a buttered mold with a tightly fitting cover and steam for two hours.
For the sauce cream 2 tablespoonfuls of butter with 1 cupful of powdered sugar, add ½ of a teaspoonful of vanilla and 1 tablespoonful of sherry and heap on a small dish.
A plain steamed batter pudding with berries, served with a sherry hard sauce. The whole thing hinges on keeping the steam gentle and the mold sealed for the full two hours.
- The batter's consistencyAfter the first cup of flour you add "enough more flour to make a very thick batter"; the recipe names no amount, so add it gradually until the batter mounds on the spoon rather than pours. Too slack and the berries sink to the bottom of the mold.
- Flouring the berriesTossing the fruit in a spoonful of flour before folding it in keeps it suspended and stops the juice bleeding into the crumb. Frozen berries work if used still frozen and tossed in flour, but they will darken the batter more.
- Mold and coverA pudding basin, coffee can or metal bowl of about 1 1/2 to 2 quarts will do, since the batter plus berries comes to roughly a quart. Butter it, fill no more than two-thirds full to leave room for rise, and if the lid is not truly tight cover with buttered parchment then foil and tie it down — condensation dripping in makes a soggy top.
- How to steamSet the mold on a rack in a deep pot, add boiling water to come halfway up the sides, and keep it at a bare simmer, covered. Check the water level once an hour and top up with boiling water; a pot that boils dry will scorch the pudding.
- Baking powder timingThe powder goes in near the end here, so get the pudding into the steam promptly once it is mixed. Steamed puddings rely on both the powder and the eggs for lift, and a batter left standing may lose some of it.
- Testing for donenessA skewer into the centre should come out clean and the pudding should feel springy and pull slightly from the sides. Let it stand five minutes before unmolding, or it may slump.
- The sauceThis is a hard sauce, not a pourable one — creamed butter and powdered (confectioners') sugar, flavoured and mounded on a dish, where it softens against the hot pudding. Chill it briefly if the kitchen is warm so it holds its shape.
- YieldServes six modestly. It reheats well: return slices to the steamer for ten minutes, or microwave briefly, and cut the sauce fresh.
Steamed puddings earned their place in economy cookery because they ask almost nothing of the stove — a single pot on a low flame, no oven heat at all, which mattered in summer kitchens and in households burning coal or wood by the scuttle. The formula here is the standard American cup-measure batter pudding of the early twentieth century, adaptable to whatever fruit was in reach: berries in July, chopped apple or dried fruit later in the year. The sherry hard sauce is the older English tradition surviving on the American table, generally traced to the brandy butter served with Christmas pudding, and it is the one small luxury in an otherwise thrifty dessert.