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Ginger Pudding
Take a quarter of a pound of beef suet, trim off all the skin and chop fine, then put it into a basin and mix in half a pound of flour, one teaspoonful of ground ginger and one saltspoonful of salt. Mix these ingredients well, then stir in a teacupful each of milk and treacle, and one beaten egg. Butter thick the interior of a pudding basin, turn the mixture into it and cover with a sheet of buttered paper, tying it round the rim of the basin. Put the basin into a saucepan of boiling water to three-quarters its height, and steam for two hours, taking care that the water does not enter the basin. Turn the pudding out onto a hot dish when cooked.
A plain British steamed suet pudding, written in English measures and English kitchen habits even though it appears in a New York hotel book. Nothing here is difficult, but several of the quantities need translating before you start.
- Keep the water at a bare simmerA hard boil throws water over the rim and slackens the string, which is the usual way these puddings are ruined. Keep it just trembling and top up with boiling water from a kettle every 40 minutes or so, never cold water.
- TeacupfulPeriod books reckon a teacupful variously, commonly a quarter-pint (5 fl oz) and sometimes as much as 6 fl oz, so somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 cup each of milk and treacle. The measure is genuinely loose in period books; if the batter looks stiffer than a thick drop batter, add milk a spoonful at a time.
- SaltspoonfulA quarter teaspoon. The salt matters more than it looks, since there is nothing else savoury in the mixture.
- TreacleBritish treacle here means dark treacle or black treacle, not golden syrup. Unsulphured molasses is the closest supermarket equivalent; blackstrap is too bitter.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys, sold shredded in some butchers and by mail order. Trim the membrane as directed and chop cold, or grate it frozen with a little of the flour to stop it clumping.
- No raising agentThere is no baking powder or soda in this, so the pudding is deliberately close and dense rather than cakey. Do not add leavening unless you want a different pudding; the lift comes only from the beaten egg and the steam.
- Covering the basinButtered paper alone is the period method. Buttered parchment with a sheet of foil over it, both pleated down the middle to allow expansion and tied under the rim with string, is more reliable at keeping condensation out.
- Timing and yieldHalf a pound of flour with the suet, liquid and egg will want a basin of about 2 pints rather than a smaller one; the two hours the recipe gives suits a pudding this size. Test with a skewer, which should come out clean and hot. It serves four to six, and wants custard, cream or a lemon or brandy sauce.
Steamed suet puddings tied in a cloth or a basin were the backbone of British domestic cooking through the nineteenth century, and the ginger-and-treacle version belongs to the same family as spotted dick, jam roly-poly and the darker Christmas puddings. Treacle, a by-product of sugar refining, was cheap enough by the mid-1800s to be a staple sweetener in ordinary households, and ground ginger was one of the few spices in constant reach; the pair together made a pudding that cost almost nothing beyond the suet. Its appearance in Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf book reflects how much of the American hotel and household repertoire of the 1890s was still frankly English, imported through British cookery writers and through the many European-trained cooks working in New York kitchens. The instructions here retain their English fingerprints: a pudding basin, buttered paper, teacupfuls and saltspoonfuls, all of which would have read as perfectly ordinary to the book's first buyers.