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Date Pudding
Use rule for Fig Pudding, adding one cup each chopped dates and shredded almonds, and omit figs.
This is a variation rather than a standalone recipe: it sends you back to the book's Fig Pudding for the base, which in Lowney's and its contemporaries means a steamed pudding of breadcrumbs or flour, suet, sugar, eggs and milk. A few notes on translating both halves.
- "Rule" means recipeIn American cookbooks of this period a rule is the formula itself. You need the Fig Pudding entry in hand before starting; nothing here works on its own.
- Shredded almondsNot the modern pre-sliced kind. Blanched almonds were slivered lengthwise with a knife, which gives longer, chunkier pieces that hold their texture through a long steaming. Slivered almonds are the closest supermarket equivalent.
- DatesDates of the period were commonly sold pressed into blocks, drier and firmer than today's fruit. Deglet Noor are the better match; Medjool are wetter and sweeter and will make the pudding heavier. Pit them yourself and chop coarsely, and toss the pieces in a little of the recipe's flour so they do not sink.
- Suet, if the base calls for itBeef suet is a butcher's order now. Frozen grated butter works, though the crumb will be slightly less light; vegetarian suet is sold in shredded form and behaves closest to the original.
- Steaming setupA buttered pudding mould or basin two-thirds full, covered with pleated parchment and foil and tied, set on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water halfway up the sides. Keep the water at a bare simmer and top it up with boiling water so it never runs dry.
- Time and donenessSteamed puddings of this size run two to three hours depending on the base recipe. It is done when a skewer comes out clean and the pudding has pulled slightly from the sides; the dates stand in for the figs, but the added cup of almonds increases the bulk a little, so err toward the longer end.
- Yield and servingA pudding of this type will likely serve eight or so, though the base recipe governs. Serve warm, unmoulded, with a hard sauce or a thin custard.
Steamed fruit puddings came to American cookbooks out of the English Christmas tradition, and fig puddings were common enough in them to serve as a base for variations. Dates were imported in quantity by the turn of the century -- chiefly from the Persian Gulf and North Africa -- and were cheap enough to turn up in puddings, breads and candies rather than being treated as a luxury. That this appears as a two-line variation says something about how such books were built: one steamed-pudding rule, then a string of substitutions letting the cook use whatever the grocer had in the box. Lowney's Cook Book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate maker, and while its chocolate chapters are the reason it exists, the dessert section is a conventional New England repertoire.