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Nut Pudding No. 2
4 ounces Pignolias 4 ounces almonds 4 ounces rusk crumbs 4 ounces sultanas Whites of 4 eggs Prepare the nuts, and grind in a nut mill; then pound with a pestle and mortar thoroughly. Put the rusk crumbs through the nut mill and then through the sieve; pick over, and soak the sultanas in cold water over night, strain, and add them to the nuts and crumbs. Beat whites of eggs to stiff froth, and mix in last. Put into a basin, and steam for six or seven hours.
A flourless, fatless steamed pudding held together entirely by beaten egg white. Everything depends on keeping that air in and on giving the basin steady, gentle steam.
- Fold, don't stirThe whites are the only leavening and the only binder — there is no flour, no butter and no sugar. Fold them into the nut and crumb mixture in two or three additions with a spatula; beating them in leaves a dense, damp brick.
- PignoliasPine nuts. Four ounces is about 3/4 cup. They are high in oil and turn bitter quickly, so taste them before grinding and buy from a shop with turnover.
- Rusk crumbsRusk is a twice-baked dry bread, sold now as Holland rusk or zwieback; plain dry breadcrumbs work in its place. The double grinding and sieving is to get them fine and uniform, which a food processor does in one pass.
- SultanasGolden raisins. The overnight cold soak plumps them so they do not draw moisture out of the pudding; drain them well and pat dry or the batter goes slack.
- The basinA 1 to 1.5 quart pudding basin or heatproof bowl, buttered, filled no more than two-thirds. Cover with pleated parchment and foil tied under the rim, and stand it on a trivet in a pan of simmering water reaching halfway up the sides.
- Six or seven hours is far too longSix or seven hours looks long -- Long steaming times of this kind are usual for heavy flour-and-suet puddings; a basin of this size holding only nuts, crumbs and whites is likely to be set through well before that. Start testing with a skewer from about two hours, and be aware that extended steaming will dry it and toughen the egg.
- Top up the waterWhatever time you settle on, check the pan every 30 minutes and add boiling water. A basin that boils dry cracks and the pudding scorches on the base.
- Yield and servingServes four to six as a small pudding. It has no added sugar beyond the sultanas, so it wants a custard, a warm apricot or lemon sauce, or lightly sweetened cream alongside.
This belongs to the wave of vegetarian cookery books published in Britain and America around the turn of the twentieth century, when meatless eating was tied up with temperance, hygiene reform and the food-reform movement. Nuts did the work meat was supposed to do — protein and richness — and nut mills, nut butters and nut "meats" were sold as the modern rational diet. Steaming in a covered basin was the ordinary way to cook a pudding on a range where oven heat was neither cheap nor reliable, and pine nuts were then usually called pignolias.