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Steamed Cherry Pudding
2 cups cherries 1/2 cup shortening 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 2 1/2 cups flour 4 teaspoons baking-powder 1 cup milk Cream the fat and sugar and add the beaten eggs. Sift together the flour and baking-powder and add to the first mixture alternately with the milk. The cherries should be stoned and the juice drained off. Stir the cherries into the dough, turn it into greased individual molds and steam for one hour. Serve with a cherry sauce.
A plain steamed batter pudding of the sort that turns up in almost every American cookbook of the 1920s. The method is forgiving; the details worth knowing are the mold size, the steam setup, and the sauce the original assumes you already have.
- Keep the water at a bare simmerThe pudding cooks in moist heat, not in boiling water. Set the filled molds on a rack in a covered pot with water reaching a third to halfway up their sides, and hold it just below a boil so the batter sets gently rather than erupting over the rims.
- ShorteningIn 1929 this meant hydrogenated vegetable shortening or lard. Butter works and tastes better; use 1/2 cup (4 oz / 115 g) and expect a slightly firmer crumb.
- Fill and cover the moldsGrease well and fill only two-thirds full, then cover each mold with greased parchment or foil tied down, or the condensing steam will drip in and make the tops sodden. Individual molds means custard cups or 6- to 8-ounce ramekins.
- Timing by sizeAn hour suits molds of about a cup. Half-cup cups are done in 35 to 45 minutes; if you use one large 2-quart mold instead, allow 1 1/2 to 2 hours. A skewer should come out with no wet batter clinging.
- The cherriesSour cherries are the likely intent, though the recipe says only "cherries"; fresh in season or canned in water. Drain them thoroughly as directed and pat them dry, then toss with a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink into the batter.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons to 2 1/2 cups flour is a heavy hand by modern standards, though generous leavening is common in period steamed puddings. Use a double-acting powder and steam promptly once the milk goes in.
- Cherry sauceNone is given. Simmer the drained cherry juice with sugar to taste, thicken lightly with cornstarch (about 1 1/2 teaspoons per cup of juice), and finish with a squeeze of lemon.
- YieldRoughly eight to ten individual puddings, depending on mold size. They reheat well: 10 minutes back in the steamer restores them better than a microwave.
Steamed puddings held their place in American cookbooks long after home ovens became reliable, partly because they suit a batter loaded with wet fruit that would weep in a dry oven, and partly because a covered pot on the range freed the oven for the rest of dinner. This one comes from the Butterick-published New Delineator Recipes, a late-1920s collection tied to The Delineator magazine, and it shows the period's habits plainly: chemical leavening in quantity, a measured half-cup of shortening rather than suet, and individual molds so each diner gets a turned-out portion. The dessert descends from the British boiled and steamed pudding tradition, where cherries, damsons and currants were common summer fillings; the American version swapped suet for shortening and the pudding cloth for the tin mold.