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Date Pudding
Chop very fine one pound of stoned dates and six ounces of beef suet; mix the latter with twelve ounces of grated bread crumbs; then add the dates, together with six ounces of sugar. Mix the whole with one egg, add one gill of milk and two heaping tablespoons of flour in which has been sifted two small teaspoons of baking powder, and steam for three hours. Serve with sauce
A steamed suet pudding of the old English type, sweetened almost entirely by the dates. The proportions are generous: expect eight to ten servings from a 1½–2 quart mould.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. The batter should be stiff and barely droppable rather than pourable; if the crumbs are very dry it can take a little more milk.
- Beef suetSix ounces of raw kidney suet, chopped or grated fine, not rendered tallow. Butchers will often supply it on request; shredded packaged suet works, and frozen butter grated on a coarse box grater is the usual substitute if suet is unavailable.
- Bread crumbsTwelve ounces of grated crumbs means soft crumbs from a stale, close-grained loaf, perhaps 6 to 7 cups loosely packed. Dry commercial crumbs are far denser and will make the pudding heavy and tight.
- Stoned datesPitted dates. A pound of Deglet Noor chops more cleanly than the softer Medjool; dust the pieces with a spoonful of the flour so they separate in the mixing.
- The hinge: the water must never stop simmeringCover the mould tightly with buttered parchment and foil, tied or crimped, and set it on a rack in a pot with water halfway up the sides. Keep it at a bare simmer for the full three hours and top up with boiling water — cold water or a dry pot stops the rise and leaves a sodden band at the base.
- Baking powder in a long steamThe recipe calls for two small teaspoons, suited to the powders then available, some of which were single-acting. With modern double-acting powder the same amount is fine, but get the pudding into the steam as soon as it is mixed.
- Testing and turning outA skewer into the centre should come out clean and the pudding should smell caramelised. Let it stand five to ten minutes before unmoulding or it will slump.
- The sauceThe recipe leaves the choice to a standard pudding sauce. A hard sauce (butter beaten with icing sugar and a little brandy or vanilla) or a thin vanilla custard are both period-correct; something sharp cuts the sweetness of a pound of dates.
- KeepingSteamed puddings improve after a day. Wrap and refrigerate, then re-steam 30 to 45 minutes to serve.
Steamed suet puddings were the backbone of Anglo-American winter cookery, and this one is essentially a plum pudding with the raisins, spices and spirits stripped out and dates put in their place. Dates arrived in North American markets in quantity in the later nineteenth century, packed from North Africa and the Middle East, and cheap enough by 1900 that cookbooks began treating them as an everyday sweetener rather than a luxury. The Butterick Cook Book (1911) came from the pattern-and-magazine publisher Butterick, and it aimed at a middle-class housekeeper working with a coal or gas range: a pudding that steams for three hours on the back of the stove, using stale bread and a butcher's offcut, was exactly the sort of economy such books were built to teach.