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Chocolate Steamed Pudding
2/3 cup sugar 1 tbsp. butter 2 eggs 1/2 cup milk 1 cup flour 1 tsp. Royal bak. pow. 2 sq. chocolate vanilla Steam 1 hour. Serve with whipped cream.
— Mrs. Hiram B. Gibbs
A community-cookbook shorthand recipe: the contributor lists what goes in and assumes any cook of 1900 knew what to do with it. The gaps are method, not measurement.
- The squares of chocolate"2 sq. chocolate" almost certainly means two of the 1-ounce squares of unsweetened baking chocolate then commonly sold, about 2 oz in all. Melt it with the milk or over hot water and cool slightly before adding, or it may stiffen against cold eggs.
- Royal baking powderA brand name, printed because Royal was a widely trusted cream-of-tartar powder at a time when many powders were of uncertain quality. Any modern double-acting baking powder works at the same 1 teaspoon.
- Vanilla, unmeasuredThe original just says "vanilla." A teaspoon of extract suits this quantity of batter.
- Assembling itCream the tablespoon of butter with the sugar, beat in the eggs, then add the melted chocolate, milk, and the flour sifted with the baking powder. The butter is scant by modern pudding standards; the eggs carry the richness.
- Setting up the steamerGrease a 1-quart mold or pudding basin and fill it no more than two-thirds, since this batter rises. Cover tightly with a lid or foil tied down, stand it on a rack in a deep pot, and add boiling water to come halfway up the mold.
- Keeping the water at a simmerThe hinge of any steamed pudding: the water must stay at a bare simmer and must never boil dry. Check it at the halfway mark and top up with boiling, not cold, water.
- DonenessOne hour is right for a 1-quart mold. A skewer into the center should come out clean; smaller individual molds will be done in 30 to 35 minutes.
- Yield and servingFour to six servings. Unmold while hot, and sweeten the whipped cream lightly, since the pudding is already sweet enough to carry it.
Steamed puddings are often said to have survived in American home cooking long after the boiled-in-a-cloth English versions faded, partly because they needed no oven space and could sit on the back of a range while the rest of dinner was made. Chocolate versions became common only after cheap, consistent baking chocolate was widely sold in wrapped ounce squares in the later nineteenth century, which is why the recipe can count in "squares" and expect to be understood. The name-checking of Royal baking powder is characteristic of church and society cookbooks of this kind: contributors named the brand they trusted, and such books are sometimes thought to have been published with an eye to selling advertising to the same companies, though the connection is uncertain. Mrs. Hiram B. Gibbs, identified by her husband's full name as convention required, is the sort of contributor these volumes were built from, dozens of neighbors each handing over one dish.