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Indian Plum Pudding Baked
The same as the preceding, except that chopped apples can be used instead of currants, or in addition to them, which would make the steamed pudding too soft. Spices can be added at option. May be baked in deep ornamental moulds, well buttered and dusted with flour, and served with burning brandy sauce. Will bake in half the time required for steaming.
This is a variation note rather than a standalone recipe, so it only makes sense alongside the steamed Indian plum pudding that precedes it. What it really tells you is how to convert a steamed suet pudding to a baked one.
- Indian meal"Indian" here means cornmeal, the defining grain of the parent recipe. Use a fine or medium yellow cornmeal; modern coarse polenta grind stays gritty in a pudding batter.
- The moisture logicThe point of the note is water content, not flavor. Chopped apples release considerably more juice than dried currants, and in a closed steamer that extra liquid has nowhere to go, so the pudding slumps; the dry heat of an oven drives it off.
- "Half the time required for steaming"The note gives no absolute times, so you must work from whatever steaming time the preceding recipe specifies and halve it. Steamed puddings of this kind commonly run several hours, which would put the baked version in the region of one and a half to two hours, but the book states no oven heat; a moderate oven and a skewer to the center are safer guides than the clock.
- Deep ornamental mouldsPeriod kitchens used tinned copper or heavy tin turk's-head and fluted moulds. A cast tube pan or a heavy fluted bundt pan behaves the same way; butter it thoroughly and dust with flour so the batter clears the ridges when turned out.
- SuetPuddings of this type normally take beef suet for texture, though the parent recipe is not reproduced here. If it calls for suet, ask a butcher for kidney suet and grate or process it cold, or substitute frozen grated butter, which gives a slightly cakier crumb.
- Spices "at option"The recipe leaves them entirely to the cook. If you add them, a teaspoon of cinnamon with half-teaspoons of nutmeg, ginger and cloves per pound of dry ingredients is within period practice, but scale to whatever the preceding recipe actually calls for.
- Burning brandy sauceWarm the brandy separately, pour it over the pudding away from the oven or any open bottle, and light it with a long match. Keep the pan of sauce off the flame and hold the bottle well back.
Indian pudding is one of the oldest continuously made American sweets, born of colonial cooks substituting native cornmeal for the wheat flour and breadcrumbs of English puddings " This ent y shows the next step in that lineage: the cornmeal pudding dressed up as an English plum pudding, with suet, dried fruit and flaming brandy. The book's terse cross-referencing style tells the cook only what changes from the previous recipe, an abbreviation common in cookbooks of the period. The remark that apples would make the steamed version "too soft" is exactly the kind of practical note that separates a working cook's book from a domestic one.