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Molasses Pudding
Three cups of flour, one each of molasses, melted butter and hot water; one tea-spoon soda; steam three hours; serve with a sauce of butter and sugar worked to a cream, with hot water added to make it the proper consistency, and flavored with vanilla. Some add a tea-cup raisins. - Mrs. Jenks, Bellefontaine.
A plain steamed molasses pudding of the contributed-recipe sort: three ingredients in equal measure, one leavening, and three hours over water. The proportions work, but the method assumes knowledge the original does not spell out.
- The hinge: soda and molassesThe single teaspoon of soda is there to neutralise the acid in the molasses and lift a batter with no eggs in it. Stir it into the flour, not into the molasses, and get the pudding into the steamer as soon as the batter comes together — the gas begins escaping immediately.
- Molasses, not blackstrapPeriod molasses meant an ordinary table syrup, roughly today's light or dark molasses. Blackstrap is a different product, much darker and bitter, and will overwhelm the pudding.
- MeasurementsThree cups flour to one cup each molasses, melted butter and hot water gives a slack, pourable batter rather than a stiff one — three cups of flour against three cups of liquid. A cup of butter is a full half pound, so the pudding is genuinely rich.
- What is missingNo salt and no spice are given. A half teaspoon of salt is worth adding, and many comparable steamed molasses puddings include ginger, cinnamon or clove.
- Setting up the steamerButter a mould or pudding basin well and fill it no more than two-thirds. Cover tightly with buttered paper or foil and tie or crimp it down, stand it on a rack in a deep pot, and pour in boiling water to come halfway up the sides. Keep the water at a bare boil and top it up from the kettle so it never runs dry.
- TimingThree hours suits one large mould; the batter comes to roughly six cups, so allow a basin of two and a half quarts or more if filling only two-thirds. Divided among smaller basins it will be done sooner, in the region of 90 minutes to two hours. Test with a skewer to the centre.
- The raisinsA teacup was a smaller measure than a modern cup, on the order of three-quarters of a cup or less. Toss them in a spoonful of the measured flour first so they do not sink.
- The sauceThis is hard sauce let down with hot water: cream soft butter with sugar until pale, then beat in hot water a spoonful at a time until it pours, and flavour with vanilla. Add the water slowly or the butter will split; serve it warm over hot pudding.
- YieldA two-quart mould serves eight to ten. It keeps several days wrapped, and re-steams for 20 minutes to come back to life.
Steamed puddings of this kind descend directly from the British boiled pudding, carried into American kitchens and then adapted to the sweetener that was cheapest and most available — molasses, a by-product of sugar refining that arrived in enormous quantity through the Atlantic trade and remained the everyday sweetener in much of the country well into the nineteenth century, when granulated sugar was still comparatively dear. Puddings like this one needed no eggs, no oven and no great skill, which made them a staple of households cooking on a stovetop or open hearth. The attribution is worth noting: The Dixie Cook Book, for all its title, was assembled from the contributions of women across the country, and Bellefontaine is in Ohio. Compilations of this period routinely reprinted and reshuffled material between regional editions, so a Northern cook's steamed pudding sits without comment among the Southern recipes.