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Fourteenth Day: Pudding
No. 190-SUET PUDDING.
One cup chopped suet, one of seeded raisins, one of milk, three of flour, butter the size of an egg, grated rind of a lemon, one teaspoonful soda, spice or not, according to taste; boil in a form four hours.
No. 191-FOAMING SAUCE.
One cup butter beaten to cream; add one of sugar and one wine-glass of wine; beat together thoroughly. Heat one and a half wine-glassfuls of wine by setting it in hot water, and add it to the other, but do not stir afterward. Let the whole stand in hot water until served. No. 192-COTTAGE PUDDING.
One cup sugar, half a cup milk, half a teaspoonful soda, one teaspoonful cream tartar, one and a half cups flour, one egg, or two if you prefer it; stir well together; bake twenty minutes. To be eaten with liquid sauce.
No. 193-SYRACUSE SAUCE.
Three finished recipes and the title of a fourth (No. 193 breaks off mid-page). Nothing here is difficult, but the units belong to the 1880s and one of the batters is missing information a modern cook expects.
- Wine-glassA wine-glass in American cookbooks of this period is about 2 fluid ounces, or a quarter cup. The foaming sauce takes two and a half wine-glassfuls in all, about 5 fluid ounces or a generous half cup, split between the portion beaten in and the warmed portion added at the end.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys; ask a butcher, since supermarket trays of "beef fat" are usually softer trimmings. Chill it hard and chop or coarsely grate it — do not let it warm and smear, or the pudding turns heavy.
- "Boil in a form"The form is a pudding mold or basin. Grease it, fill two-thirds full, cover tightly with pleated paper or foil and string, and stand it on a trivet in a covered pot of simmering water reaching halfway up. Top up with boiling water as it drops; four hours is right for a pudding this size.
- Soda in the suet puddingOne teaspoon of soda with only milk and flour has little acid to react with. Either substitute baking powder, or use sour milk or buttermilk in place of the sweet milk the recipe calls for; otherwise the pudding can taste faintly soapy.
- Soda and cream of tartarIn the cottage pudding these two together are simply homemade baking powder. Half a teaspoon soda plus one teaspoon cream of tartar is equivalent to about 1 1/2 teaspoons modern double-acting baking powder.
- The cottage pudding has no fatNo butter is listed, which gives a dry, almost biscuit-like crumb. Two to four tablespoons of melted butter creamed with the sugar will give a richer result.
- Oven and timingThe recipe gives no oven temperature, only 'bake twenty minutes'. A moderate oven, around 350F, and a shallow pan will suit; check at 20 minutes, and allow longer in a deeper dish.
- Serving the foaming sauceIt holds only because it is kept warm in a water bath and left unstirred; agitating it after the hot wine goes in will split the butter. Make it at the last moment and carry it to table in its bowl of hot water.
- YieldThe suet pudding will probably serve six to eight, the cottage pudding about six; either sauce recipe is enough for one of them.
Boiled suet pudding in a cloth or mold is one of the oldest surviving forms of English pudding, and it crossed to American kitchens intact -- beef fat, flour, raisins and long, patient steam, no oven required. "Cottage pudding" is the American counterpart: a plain one-egg cake turned into a pudding by the sauce poured over it. Six Little Cooks was written as a children's cookery story. Syracuse sauce, No. 193, is cut off here.