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Suet Pudding
One cupful of chopped suet, one teacupful of molasses, one cupful sweet milk, three and one-half cupfuls of flour, one cupful raisins, one cupful of currants, one teaspoonful of soda, a pinch of salt, one-half teaspoonful each of cinnamon, allspice, cloves. Steam two hours.
Citron or lemon peel may be added if desired.
A plain steamed pudding of the kind that stood in for Christmas pudding the other fifty-one weeks of the year. The batter is stiff and forgiving; the only thing that will ruin it is letting the water go off the boil or into the pudding.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys, and shredded packaged suet or a block from a butcher both work. Chop or grate it cold and toss it with a spoonful of the flour so the shreds stay separate rather than clumping.
- Teacupful vs. cupfulThe recipe distinguishes the two, and a teacup is usually read as the smaller measure, often given as roughly 6 fl oz against the 8 fl oz cup, though period usage varied and some writers used the words interchangeably. Reading the molasses as about 3/4 cup is a reasonable interpretation; leave the rest at a full cup.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cooking molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and will fight the spices. It is also the main acid available to the soda here, since the milk is sweet, so a neutral substitute such as corn syrup would leave the soda with little to work on.
- SodaStir the teaspoon of baking soda into the molasses rather than the flour. It will foam; that is the lift, and the batter should go into the mold promptly once mixed.
- The moldAllow at least 2 quarts, and 3 is safer for this quantity of batter: a pudding basin, coffee can or metal bowl, well greased and filled no more than two-thirds. Cover with greased parchment and foil tied down, or the condensing steam will waterlog the top.
- SteamingSet the mold on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water halfway up its sides, lid on, water kept at a steady simmer for the full two hours. Check the level at the hour mark and top up with boiling, never cold, water.
- Doneness and yieldA skewer into the center should come out clean and the pudding should have pulled slightly from the sides. Let it stand ten minutes before turning out; it serves eight to ten.
- ServingA hard sauce of butter, powdered sugar and a little brandy, or a plain hot vanilla sauce, is what it wants.
Suet puddings are the domestic English tradition from which Christmas pudding descends, and in American kitchens the sweetener often differed: where a British cook reached for sugar or treacle, this one reaches for molasses, which was cheap, plentiful and the standard dark sweetener in North American baking well into the twentieth century. The technique is older than reliable ovens. A pudding boiled or steamed in a cloth or basin over the fire needed no baking oven at all, which is why so many nineteenth-century pudding recipes are steamed rather than baked. The appeal of such a dish is easy to see: the ingredients are pantry staples, the method is nearly unfailing, and the result stretches to feed a table.