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Almond and Raisin Pudding
1/4 pound bread crumbs 2 dozen almonds 1/4 pound raisins 2 ounces of sugar 2 ounces of flour 1/2 pint milk 2 ounces of butter Blanch the almonds, and put them through a nut mill; then pound them well in a mortar. Add one drop of water occasionally to prevent them oiling. Stone the raisins, and chop them, but not very fine; and add them with the almonds, sugar and flour to the bread crumbs. Make the milk hot, and melt the butter in it, and stir it into the other ingredients. Butter a mold, and put in the mixture, and steam for four hours.
A plain steamed bread pudding with no eggs, which explains both its density and the marathon steaming time. Sizes are given by weight, so a scale is the shortest route.
- Weights in cups1/4 lb (4 oz) fresh bread crumbs is roughly 2 cups loosely packed; 1/4 lb raisins is about 3/4 cup; 2 oz sugar is 1/4 cup; 2 oz flour is a scant 1/2 cup; 2 oz butter is 4 tablespoons.
- The half pint of milkIf the book is American, 1/2 pint is 1 cup; if British, it is 10 fl oz. Either works, but the batter should be thick and droppable rather than pourable, so add the milk gradually and stop when it holds together.
- Almonds without a mortarTwo dozen blanched almonds is roughly 1 oz, a scant 1/4 cup. A food processor does the pounding; pulsing them with a spoonful of the measured sugar or flour, rather than the drop of water, also helps keep them from turning to oily paste.
- Raisins are already stonedModern supermarket raisins are seedless, so skip the stoning. Chop them coarsely as directed; whole raisins sink and clump in an eggless batter.
- Covering the moldButter the mold, fill it no more than two-thirds, and cover tightly with buttered parchment and foil or a lid. An uncovered pudding takes on condensation and turns sodden.
- Steaming timeFour hours suits a large mold. A 1-quart mold set on a rack in a covered pot of simmering water will likely be done sooner, in the region of 2 hours; test with a skewer, which should come out clean, and top up the water as it boils away.
- No eggs, no leaveningNothing here rises. Expect a close, moist, sliceable pudding rather than a light one — that is the intended texture, not a failure.
- Yield and servingServes 4 to 6. Turn out hot and serve with a sweet custard, a lemon or brandy sauce, or simply cream.
Steamed bread-crumb puddings were a staple of British and American hot dessert cookery from the mid-nineteenth century onward: they used up stale bread, needed no oven, and cooked on a range that was already lit. Almonds carried weight in older fasting cookery, where ground almonds and almond milk stood in for dairy and richer fare; by the early twentieth century, vegetarian and "meatless" writers were leaning on nuts for much the same reason, as a source of fat and substance where meat was excluded. The instruction to add a drop of water while pounding is genuine practical craft from the pre-processor kitchen, where an almond paste that broke and oiled was a wasted batch.