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Strawberry Pudding
2 ounces of flour 4 ounces butter 1 ounce sugar 2 tablespoons strawberry jam 1/2 teaspoon carbonate soda Beat the butter to a cream; add it to the sugar. Sprinkle the flour in gradually, stirring all the time. Stir in the jam; add the soda last. Steam in a well-buttered mold or basin for four hours.
A very small steamed jam pudding with no eggs and no liquid beyond the jam itself. The proportions as printed are unusual and the steaming time is far longer than the volume requires.
- Weights, not volumesThe ounces are weights: 2 oz flour is about 1/2 cup, 4 oz butter is one stick, 1 oz sugar about 2 tablespoons. Use a scale rather than converting, since the whole character of the pudding rests on the fat-to-flour ratio.
- The ratio looks reversedTwice as much butter as flour will give a greasy, barely cohesive batter that weeps fat into the steam. Many steamed jam puddings reverse these figures, with more flour than butter, and the two weights may have been transposed here. Treat this as the point to check before you commit.
- Carbonate of sodaIn cookery writing this is bicarbonate of soda, what a modern tin calls baking soda. Its only acid partner here is the jam, so mix it in at the very end as directed and get the pudding into the steam promptly; much of the lift is lost if the batter is left standing.
- "Mold or basin"A 1-pint pudding basin or heatproof bowl. Butter it well, fill no more than two-thirds, and cover with buttered parchment and foil tied under the rim so condensation cannot drip in.
- Steaming timeFour hours belongs to a large suet pudding, not to the eight-odd ounces of batter this makes. A pint basin of this mixture should be set through in something like 1 1/2 hours over gently simmering water. Overlong steaming will not ruin it, but it dries the crumb and darkens the jam.
- Keep the water topped upThe pan should never boil dry or boil hard enough to rock the basin. Add boiling water from a kettle as it evaporates, so the steam temperature stays constant.
- Yield and servingServes two, three at a stretch. Turn out hot and serve with custard, cream, or a spoonful of warmed jam thinned with a little water.
Steamed jam puddings were the everyday sweet of the British and Anglo-American kitchen for most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, made in a basin over a pan on the stove at a time when many households cooked without a reliable oven. This one belongs to a strand of that tradition that leaves out eggs entirely, relying on creamed butter and a pinch of soda for lift, which made it useful when eggs were dear or short. The strawberry jam does double duty here as flavouring and as the acid that sets the soda working.