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Graham Plum Pudding
1½ cups graham flour 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 cup molasses ½ cup milk 1 cup seeded raisins ½ teaspoon cloves 1 egg ½ teaspoon soda 2 tablespoons butter Beat egg; add liquids, flour in which soda has been sifted, fruit, spices and melted butter. Pour into buttered baking powder tins and steam four hours. Serve with Brown Sugar Sauce. 1 cup chopped figs ½ cup chopped suet 3 eggs
A plain steamed molasses pudding from the era when "plum pudding" meant any boiled or steamed pudding full of dried fruit, plums or not. The method is forgiving; the equipment needs translating.
- Stray ingredients at the endThe trailing "1 cup chopped figs, ½ cup chopped suet, 3 eggs" belongs to a neighbouring recipe on the printed page and has no place in these instructions. Follow the numbered list at the top and the directions as written; ignore the tail.
- Baking powder tinsThese were the tall cylindrical tins that baking powder was sold in, about the size of a modern 1-pound can. Straight-sided pudding moulds, clean 15-oz cans, or a single 1-quart buttered pudding basin all work; fill any container no more than two-thirds and cover tightly with buttered foil or a tied cloth.
- How to steamSet the covered tins on a rack in a deep pot, add boiling water to come halfway up their sides, cover the pot, and keep the water at a bare simmer. Check the level every hour and top up with boiling water so it never runs dry.
- Four hours is for the big mouldTiming -- The recipe calls for four hours' steaming in the tins, and a full quart basin will want that long. Smaller individual tins may be ready sooner, so test rather than rely on the clock: a skewer should come out clean and the pudding should feel springy.
- Graham flourCoarse-ground whole wheat, unsifted, named for Sylvester Graham. Modern whole wheat flour is the closest substitute, though it is milled finer; the pudding will be slightly denser than intended.
- Soda and molassesThe half teaspoon of soda is the only leavening and works against the acid in the molasses. Use unsulphured cooking molasses rather than blackstrap, which is far more bitter than the table molasses of 1907, and get the batter into the tins promptly once the two meet.
- Brown Sugar SauceA companion recipe elsewhere in the book. Any hard sauce or warm brown-sugar-and-butter sauce serves the same purpose.
- YieldAbout 1 quart of batter, which is six to eight servings. The puddings keep well wrapped for several days and reheat by steaming for 20 to 30 minutes.
Steamed puddings like this one are the thrifty American descendant of the English boiled plum pudding, made without the brandy, candied peel and long ageing that mark the Christmas version. By the time Lowney's Cook Book appeared in 1907, molasses and graham flour together signalled an everyday pudding rather than a festive one: molasses was cheaper than sugar, and graham flour carried the health reputation attached to Sylvester Graham's campaign of the 1830s and 1840s for coarse unbolted wheat. "Plum" had meant raisin in English cookery since long before, which is why a pudding with no plums in it keeps the name. The book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and belongs to the genre of cookbooks issued by food companies to sell their product, which is why its chocolate recipes are so thorough and a homely steamed pudding like this gets four lines.