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Easter Dumpling
1 pt. flour 1/4 lb. suet 1/2 lb. raisins or currants 1 egg 1 cup molasses 1/2 cup sugar 1 tsp. Slade's c. tartar 1/2 tsp. soda
— Cola Sears
1 salt spoon salt 1 tsp. Slade's nutmeg 1 tsp. Slade's ginger 1 tsp. Slade's cloves 1 tsp. Slade's cinnamon Mix with milk. Tie in cloth, and drop in boiling water, and steam four hours. Serve with sauce:-1 egg beaten light, 1 cup sugar, 1 tsp. vanilla. Make a thickening of flour and boiling water. Boil two or three minutes. Add this mixture to first.
— Mrs. N. A. Nixon
A boiled-and-steamed suet pudding of the New England church-supper type, leavened with cream of tartar and soda rather than baking powder. The whole thing hinges on keeping the water at a steady simmer for the full four hours.
- A pint of flourFlour was measured by volume: a pint is 2 cups, roughly 8 to 9 oz. Sift it, since the leavening is dry-mixed rather than dissolved.
- Slade'sD. & L. Slade of Boston sold cream of tartar and ground spices in tins, and the contributor is simply naming her brand. Use any cream of tartar and any fresh ground nutmeg, ginger, cloves and cinnamon; 4 tsp of spice total is assertive but correct for the period.
- Cream of tartar and soda1 tsp cream of tartar with 1/2 tsp soda is the era's homemade baking powder, and here the molasses supplies extra acid. Mix and get it into the water promptly, because the gas begins forming as soon as the milk goes in.
- Salt spoonA salt spoon holds about 1/4 tsp. With a cup of molasses and half a cup of sugar in the batter, do not increase it much.
- SuetBeef suet, finely chopped or grated, not rendered. Butchers will often supply it on request; frozen suet grates far more easily than fresh. Cold grated butter or vegetable shortening gives a softer, less traditional crumb.
- Milk quantity is not given"Mix with milk" means to a stiff dropping batter, roughly 3/4 to 1 cup here. Judge it by feel rather than guessing at a fixed figure.
- The cloth, and the waterScald and flour a square of cotton, heap the batter in, and tie loosely so the pudding can swell about a third. Keep the water at a bare boil the whole four hours and top up with boiling water, never cold, or the pudding sinks.
- A basin insteadA buttered 2-quart pudding basin covered with pleated parchment and foil, set on a rack in a covered pot of simmering water, does the same work with less risk of a waterlogged seam. Same four hours.
- The sauceThe beaten egg and sugar are thinned with a boiled flour-and-water paste, so the egg is only partly cooked by residual heat. Whisk the combined sauce in a saucepan over low heat until it reaches 160F, or use pasteurized egg, and add the vanilla off the heat.
- YieldServes eight to ten, sliced warm. Leftovers slice cleanly cold and reheat well in steam.
Steamed suet puddings tied in a cloth were the standard cold-weather dessert of New England kitchens through the nineteenth century, cheap in fuel because they sat over the same fire as everything else, and cheap in ingredients because molasses stood in for sugar and beef fat for butter. The Slade's brand names are the tell of a fundraising cookbook: D. & L. Slade Company of Boston was a familiar supplier of cream of tartar and ground spices in the region, and contributors wrote down the tin on their shelf. Philathea classes were young women's Bible classes of the Baraca-Philathea movement, widespread in Baptist and other Protestant churches in the early twentieth century.