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Date Whole Wheat Pudding
2 cups whole wheat meal 1/2 teaspoon each salt and soda 1 cup stoned dates 1 cup milk 1/2 cup molasses Sift soda and salt with the meal, add dates and stir. Add milk and molasses. The dry flour absorbs much of the moisture while pudding is cooking. Steam 3 hours in a closed mold. Serve with whipped cream or any pudding sauce.
A plain steamed suet-less pudding built on whole wheat meal, dates and molasses. It needs no eggs and no fat, so the only things that can go wrong are the mold and the water level.
- Whole wheat mealThis is coarse whole wheat flour, closer to today's stone-ground whole wheat than to the fine white-flour-plus-bran blends sold as "whole wheat" in some markets. Sifting it with the soda and salt is mostly to distribute the leavening; the bran will not pass a fine sieve, so whisk instead.
- Soda and molassesThe soda is the only leavening and it works against the acid in the molasses. Mix and get the pudding into the mold promptly rather than letting the batter stand, or much of the lift is spent before it reaches the steam.
- The moldA "closed mold" is a lidded pudding basin or tin with a clamp lid. Grease it well and fill no more than two-thirds; the batter rises and the seal keeps steam out of the pudding. A pudding basin covered with pleated parchment and foil, tied down, does the same job.
- Steaming setupSet the mold on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water reaching halfway up the sides, cover, and keep the water at a bare simmer. Check every 45 minutes and top up with boiling water; a pot that boils dry will scorch the pudding and can crack the mold.
- Three hoursThe recipe does not specify a mold size; three hours suits a single mold of about this batter's volume, and the long steam is what softens the coarse bran. Divided among several small molds it will cook considerably faster. Test with a skewer through the center.
- Dates"Stoned" means pitted. Chop them; whole dates sink into a dense band at the bottom. Tossing the pieces with a spoonful of the measured meal keeps them separated in a batter this loose.
- ConsistencyThe batter will look thin when mixed, which is why the recipe reassures you about absorption. Resist adding flour.
- Yield and servingProbably six to eight servings, though the recipe gives none. Unmold hot, and if it is made ahead, resteam 30 minutes rather than reheating in the oven, which dries the crust.
Steamed and boiled puddings were a common finish to a festive dinner in English and, to a lesser degree, American households well into the twentieth century, cooked in a cloth or a lidded mold on the stovetop. This one is a plainer version of the type: no suet, no eggs, no brandy, no candied peel, with dates supplying the sweetness and richness that dried currants, raisins and sugar carried in older recipes. The substitution of whole wheat meal and molasses for white flour and sugar suggests an interest in "unrefined" cooking, and dates had become more widely available as California and imported Middle Eastern fruit reached grocers.