Plum Pudding
1 cup suet chopped fine 1 cup molasses 3 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder 3 cups flour 1½ teaspoons salt teaspoon nutmeg 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon Mix suet, molasses and milk. Sift together flour, baking powder, salt, cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon, and add. Turn into a buttered mold and steam 3 hours. Serve with hard sauce.
NOTE-One and a half cups of chopped raisins can be added to above if desired, and the whole or part spices omitted.
A steamed suet pudding of the plain molasses type, leavened with baking powder rather than yeast or eggs. It is forgiving, but the steaming is the whole technique.
- SuetBeef suet from the kidney area, asked for at a butcher counter, is what the recipe means; it is drier and firmer than ordinary fat trimmings. Grate or chop it very fine while cold, or freeze briefly first. Packaged shredded suet, where sold, works directly.
- MolassesUse unsulphured light or dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and will dominate. The molasses is the only sweetener here, so the pudding is dark and only moderately sweet.
- The liquidMilk is called for in the mixing step but no quantity is given among the ingredients. Roughly a cup is consistent with three cups of flour and this style of pudding; add it gradually until the batter is thick but droppable rather than stiff.
- SpicesCloves appear in the method but not in the list. A quarter teaspoon ground cloves suits this quantity. The nutmeg is printed without a numeral, so it may be a full teaspoon or a fraction dropped in printing; half a teaspoon is in keeping with the cinnamon.
- Baking powderCalumet was a double-acting brand; any modern double-acting baking powder substitutes measure for measure. Do not let the batter stand once mixed, as the leavening starts working immediately and the pudding depends on it for lift.
- The mold and the steamButter a two quart or larger pudding basin or covered mold and fill it no more than two-thirds. Cover tightly with a lid or buttered foil tied down, stand it on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water reaching halfway up the sides, and keep the water at a bare simmer, topping up with boiling water so it never runs dry.
- Doneness and yieldThree hours is right for a full mold; a skewer to the centre should come out clean and the pudding should pull slightly from the sides. Let it rest ten minutes before unmolding. It serves eight to ten.
- Hard sauceThe intended accompaniment is creamed butter and powdered sugar, flavoured with vanilla or spirits, served cold against the hot pudding. Allow about half a cup of butter to a cup and a half of sugar.
Despite the name, this pudding contains no plums, and in the version as printed no fruit at all unless the note, which permits raisins to be added, is followed. "Plum" in English cookery had long meant raisins or dried fruit generally, and by the nineteenth century the term attached itself to any dark steamed suet pudding of that family, fruited or not. What distinguishes this one from the older Christmas puddings it descends from is the baking powder: in traditional plum puddings eggs served to bind and enrich rather than to aerate, and this recipe contains no eggs at all. The specification of a named brand in the ingredient list is the other clue to its origins. Booklets like this one were published by baking powder companies and distributed cheaply or free, and the recipes in them are reliable precisely because the manufacturer had an interest in the reader's success.