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Ginger Pudding No. 1
1 breakfast cup of flour 1/2 breakfast cup of syrup 1/2 breakfast cup milk 1 tablespoon brown sugar 1 teaspoon ground ginger 1/2 teaspoon carbonate soda Warm the milk, butter, sugar and syrup all together, then sprinkle in the flour into which the ginger has been first mixed; dissolve the soda in a little cold milk, and add it last. Steam in a well greased basin for about four hours.
A small British steamed sponge, leavened with soda and sweetened almost entirely with syrup. Two things in the original need sorting out before you start: the butter that appears in the method but not the ingredient list, and the steaming time.
- The missing butterThe method warms "the milk, butter, sugar and syrup" but no butter is listed. About 2 oz (roughly 4 tablespoons) is a plausible amount for a pudding on this scale. The quantity is genuinely absent from the original, so treat it as an estimate.
- Breakfast cupA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup, roughly 8 to 10 fluid ounces. Reading it as a standard 8 oz cup throughout keeps the flour-to-liquid ratio sensible.
- SyrupThis means golden syrup, or light treacle. Light corn syrup is the nearest widely available substitute, though it is blander; a mix of corn syrup with a spoonful of molasses gets closer to the original flavour.
- Carbonate sodaBaking soda. The recipe dissolves it in cold milk and adds it last, so get the basin into the steamer without delay.
- Steaming timeFour hours is long for a soda-raised sponge of this size; 1.5 to 2 hours over simmering water may well be enough. Grease the basin, cover with pleated parchment or foil and tie. Test with a skewer. Keep the water halfway up the basin and top it up with boiling water as it drops.
- The basinA ceramic or metal pudding basin, greased and no more than two-thirds full. A stand on the bottom of the pan, or a folded cloth, keeps the basin off direct heat.
- ServingGood warm or cold. Serves four. Custard or cream is the usual accompaniment, and a spoonful of extra syrup over the top is common.
Steamed puddings in a basin were an everyday sweet of British households well into the twentieth century, cooked on the stovetop where no reliable oven existed and requiring nothing more than a pan of water and patience. Many were bound with beef suet; here butter and milk carry the richness instead. The syrup is most likely golden syrup, a by-product of cane sugar refining, widely sold in British kitchens from the late nineteenth century onward, which made ginger puddings and gingerbreads cheap to sweeten. The pairing of ginger with treacle or syrup is much older still, and the soda-and-syrup combination that lifts this batter works on the same principle as gingerbread.