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Graham Pudding
One cup of graham flour; one cup of wheat flour: one cup of molasses; one cup of sweet milk; one egg; one teaspoon of soda; one cup of raisins. Warm the molasses, add the soda to it, and stir in the two kinds of flour well sifted together; then gradually add the milk, then the egg well beaten, and lastly the stoned raisins. Place the mixture in a buttered basin or in a pudding-mold, set it in a steamer over a kettle of hot water, and steam two hours.
A plain steamed molasses pudding of the sort that lived on the back of the stove all afternoon. Nothing here is difficult, but the leavening and the steaming both behave differently than a modern baker might expect.
- The hinge: soda into warm molassesWarming the molasses and stirring in the soda starts the reaction immediately, which is why the batter foams and lightens. Have the flours sifted and everything else measured before you begin, and get the pudding into the steamer promptly; a batter left standing will have spent its lift.
- Graham flourGraham flour is coarsely ground whole wheat, bran and germ included. Modern stone-ground whole-wheat flour is the nearest thing; ordinary fine whole wheat works but gives a smoother, less characteristic crumb.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh, unsoured milk — the distinction mattered when sour milk was a standard leavening partner for soda. Whole milk is what the recipe assumes.
- Soda without acid to spareMolasses is acidic and neutralises the soda; that is the whole leavening system here, since there is no sour milk and no baking powder. If your molasses is a mild modern one, a full teaspoon may leave a faint soapy or metallic edge, and you can cut it back a little; a robust dark molasses will give the fullest flavour.
- Basin and moldA "basin" is a heatproof pudding bowl, roughly 1.5 quarts. Butter it well and fill it no more than two-thirds; cover with buttered parchment and foil, or a tied cloth, so condensation does not soak the top.
- Steaming and water levelKeep the water at a steady simmer and top it up with boiling water as it goes down — two hours will boil a kettle dry. The pudding is done when a skewer comes out clean and the surface springs back.
- Stoned raisins"Stoned" means the seeds have been picked out, a chore that vanished with seedless varieties. Ordinary raisins need no preparation; tossing them in a spoonful of the measured flour keeps them from sinking.
- Yield and servingServes six to eight. It wants a sauce — hard sauce, a lemon or vanilla pudding sauce, or simply cream. Leftovers steam or microwave back to life well the next day.
Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the American temperance and dietary reformer of the 1830s who preached coarse unbolted wheat against the fashionable white loaf; by the time this book appeared the flour was widely sold in its own right and the reforming zeal had largely worn off, leaving a nutty, thrifty flour cooks liked for brown breads and steamed puddings. Steaming rather than baking suited a household with a range in constant use: the pudding sat over a kettle and needed no oven space and no fuel beyond what was already burning. Molasses supplies both the sweetening and the acid that sets off the soda, an economy that shows how far this dish sits from richer egg-and-butter puddings -- one egg for the whole basin, milk instead of cream, and raisins doing the work of candied fruit.