Home › Hot Desserts › Satisfaction Pudding
Satisfaction Pudding
1 teacup of butter 1 teacup of milk 1 teacup of golden syrup 1 teacup of preserved ginger chips 1 teaspoon carbonate soda 1 teacup of flour Warm the butter, syrup and milk together. When well mixed, sprinkle in enough flour to make a stiff batter. Add the ginger chips and soda last, and steam for about five hours.
A steamed suet pudding with the suet swapped for butter, which is why it turns up in a meatless book. The recipe is written in teacups and contradicts itself on the flour, so read the method before you measure.
- The teacupIn British books of this period a teacup is usually reckoned at somewhere between 5 and 8 fl oz (a third of a pint is a common figure); a breakfast cup is the larger measure, around 10 fl oz. Use the same cup throughout and the proportions hold whichever size you pick.
- The flour is the hingeThe list says one teacup, the method says "enough flour to make a stiff batter." The two do not agree, and the method is the safer guide: one cup of flour against a cup each of butter, milk and syrup would give something very slack. Add flour gradually until the mixture drops heavily from the spoon rather than runs, which is likely to take considerably more than the cup listed.
- Carbonate sodaBicarbonate of soda, i.e. baking soda. One teaspoon is the raising agent for the whole pudding. The recipe has it going in last, presumably so that it does not begin reacting in the warm mixture before the pudding reaches the basin.
- Golden syrupAn inverted cane sugar syrup, still sold under that name. Light corn syrup is the nearest substitute but is blander; a spoonful of black treacle or molasses stirred into corn syrup gets closer to the flavour.
- Preserved ginger chipsStem ginger preserved in heavy syrup, cut small — sold in jars as stem ginger in syrup. Drain and chop it; crystallised ginger works, though it carries more sugar. Toss the pieces in a little of the flour so they do not sink.
- Steaming vesselA greased pudding basin filled no more than two-thirds, covered with pleated greaseproof paper and foil and tied under the rim, standing on a trivet or folded cloth in a pan of simmering water that comes halfway up. Top the pan up with boiling water; letting it boil dry is the usual way these puddings are ruined.
- Five hoursThat is longer than a butter-based pudding of this size is likely to need; two to two and a half hours will probably cook it through, though a longer steam gives a darker, denser result. Test with a skewer to the centre.
- YieldFour teacups of wet ingredients plus the flour will need more than a 1.5 pint basin; allow at least 2 pints, filled no more than two-thirds. It serves around six, and it wants a custard or a jug of the ginger syrup thinned with cream.
Steamed puddings were a mainstay of British winter cookery, and many were bound with shredded beef suet -- which is the sort of problem a meatless cookery book sets out to solve, though butter- and bread-based puddings were long established alongside them. Substituting butter for suet would let a household keep the pudding course on days of abstinence or during wartime meat shortages. Golden syrup and jarred preserved ginger were both familiar grocer's goods by the turn of the century, much of the ginger arriving from China and Hong Kong in stoneware jars, and they gave a meatless pudding the richness and dark colour that suet would otherwise have supplied. The cheerful, faintly boastful name is of a kind that recurs in period pudding lists, though nothing is recorded about the origin of this one.