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March Pudding
One cup dried apples, cup molasses, one and one-fourths cup flour, fourth cup butter, one egg, one tea-spoon each of soda and cinnamon, half tea-spoon cloves; wash and soak apples over night, cut fine and mix with water in which they were soaked, add molasses and spice; mix egg, butter and flour together; stir soda with apples and molasses; add and bake immediately; serve hot with sauce made of half cup butter and one cup sugar, beaten smooth and flavored with nutmeg, lemon or vanilla. - Miss Lizzie March,
A molasses-and-dried-apple pudding of the type that filled out late-winter tables, leavened by the reaction between soda and molasses. It comes together in minutes and must go into the oven at once.
- Bake immediately means itThe soda is stirred into the acidic apple-molasses mixture, and the gas begins escaping on contact. Have the dish greased and the oven fully preheated before the soda goes in, or the pudding bakes flat and heavy.
- Soda, not baking powderA teaspoon of soda to a cup of molasses is a common nineteenth-century proportion and works here; molasses supplies the acid. Baking powder is not a like-for-like substitute and will give less lift.
- The soaking waterNo quantity is given. Cover the cup of dried apples with about a cup of water overnight; most will be absorbed, and whatever remains goes into the batter. If the apples drink nearly all of it, the batter will be very stiff, so hold back a spoonful or two of water to loosen it.
- Dried applesOld-style dried apple rings, not the crisp freeze-dried chips sold as snacks. Unsulphured dried rings soak and chop best; chop them fine after soaking, as instructed, or you get pockets of fruit and dry crumb between.
- Oven and vesselThe recipe gives no oven temperature; a moderate oven of about 350F suits it. Butter a 1 1/2-quart pudding dish or an 8-inch square pan and bake 40 to 50 minutes, until the center springs back and a skewer comes out clean. Molasses browns fast; tent with foil if the top darkens early.
- The sauceHalf a cup of butter beaten smooth with a cup of sugar is a hard sauce. Use softened, not melted, butter and beat until pale; superfine sugar dissolves better than granulated. It is spooned onto the hot pudding cold, so it melts down over it.
- Spice measuresA teaspoon of cinnamon and half a teaspoon of cloves is assertive by modern standards but suits molasses. Ground cloves from a jar that has been open a year will be much weaker than freshly ground.
- YieldSix modest servings, seven or eight with the sauce, which is rich enough that a scant tablespoon each is plenty.
The name is often said to be the contributor's rather than the month's: community cookbooks of the 1880s credited the women who sent dishes in, and The Dixie Cook Book is thick with such credits. The pudding itself belongs to a large family of dried-apple, molasses and soda bakes that carried households through the stretch between the last of the autumn fruit and the first of the spring, when apples existed only as rings strung up to dry and molasses was the cheap sweetener in the pantry. The chemistry is the interesting part: soda needed an acid partner, and before commercial baking powder was universal, cooks reached for molasses, sour milk or vinegar to get lift. Hard sauce, the butter-and-sugar paste served alongside, was a common accompaniment to hot steamed or baked puddings of the period, and its habit of melting into the crumb was the point.