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Ginger Pudding
3 eggs. 3 cups flour. 1 cup brown sugar. 1 cup butter. 1 cup molasses. 1/2 cup buttermilk. 1 1/2 teaspoons ginger. 1 lb. raisins. 1/2 lb. citron. 1/4 lb. almonds.
Stir one teaspoon soda which has been dissolved in hot water into milk, beat this with molasses; add molasses and milk while foaming to yellows, sugar and butter; then one and a half tablespoons ginger; spice to taste, then flour and whites alternately. Batter must be very stiff.
Flour raisins and citron, cut fine. Blanched almonds cut fine. Mix all with batter; put into buttered molds, not too full, and steam two or three hours. Serve with hot brandy sauce.
A steamed molasses-and-fruit pudding of the old English plum-pudding family, scaled for a large household. The recipe assumes you know that the eggs are separated, and it contradicts itself on the ginger.
- The ginger discrepancyThe ingredient list says 1 1/2 teaspoons; the method says 1 1/2 tablespoons. The method reading suits the quantity of batter and the name of the pudding, but the original is genuinely ambiguous. Start at a tablespoon if you want a middle course.
- Separate the eggs firstNothing in the list tells you to, but the method calls for "yellows" early and beaten whites folded in alternately with the flour at the end. Have the whites beaten to soft peaks before you start combining.
- Soda and buttermilkOne teaspoon of soda dissolved in a little hot water, stirred into the buttermilk, then beaten with the molasses. It will foam vigorously and the point is to get it into the batter while it still is. Work quickly at that stage.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold around Christmas and in Italian and Middle Eastern groceries. If you cannot find it, candied orange or lemon peel is the usual substitution. "Cut fine" presumably means a small dice.
- Flouring the fruitTossing the raisins and citron in a little of the measured flour keeps them suspended rather than sinking through a batter this heavy. Take the flour from the three cups rather than adding extra.
- Molds and fillingButtered pudding basins, coffee tins or a proper lidded steamed-pudding mold, filled no more than two-thirds. Cover each with buttered parchment and foil, tied down, or the condensing steam will soak the top.
- SteamingSet the molds on a rack in a deep pot, add boiling water to come halfway up, cover, and keep it at a bare simmer. Top up with boiling water as it drops. Two hours suits a small mold, three a large one; a skewer should come out clean and the pudding should feel springy.
- YieldThe quantities here run to roughly three pounds of batter before the fruit, and close to five pounds once the raisins, citron and almonds go in -- enough for two large puddings and 12 to 16 servings. Steamed puddings keep well wrapped and reheat by steaming again for 30 to 45 minutes.
- Brandy sauceNo sauce recipe accompanies this page. The period options are a hard sauce (creamed butter and powdered sugar with brandy beaten in) or a cooked sauce of butter, sugar, egg yolk and brandy served hot; the recipe's call for a hot brandy sauce points to the latter.
Steamed molasses puddings stiff with raisins, citron and almonds are generally traced to the English boiled plum pudding, and by Mrs. Wilson's day they seem to have become winter and holiday food rather than everyday food -- a pound of raisins and a half pound of citron was not a Tuesday expense. The buttermilk-and-soda leavening, in place of the eggs and suet its British ancestor relied on, marks it as a nineteenth-century American adaptation, quicker and cheaper than that ancestor.