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Puddings
ALMOND PUDDING. -Blanche a pound of almonds; beat to a paste, adding gradually two tablespoons of rose or orange water to prevent their oiling. With these stir two tumblers rich cream, two wine glasses milk, two of wine, ten eggs, well beaten, one tablespoon arrowroot flour, one of bread crumbs. Boil or steam half an hour. Serve with arrowroot sauce.- Mrs. A. P. H.
APPLE CHARLOTTE. -Trim crust from slices of bread, dip in clarified butter and fit them perfectly into a tin mold. Fill to top with stewed apples or apple marmalade; cover with slices of bread dipped in the butter, then with plate placing a weight on top; bake in quick oven; when nearly done plate may be removed. Charlotte may be sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar and browned. If bread is not well fitted together juices will escapo and ruin appearance of charlotte. Serve with cream sauce or without as liked. Any jam or preserve will do, but apple sauce or marmalade is best. To make the marmalade, stew three pounds of pared tart apples with one pound of sugar, one third pound of butter, season with lemon if liked. Stew gently until a marmalade is formed. - Ruth Hoyal, Atlanta, Ga DELICIOUS APPLE PUDDING. - Three eggs, one cup each of sugar, melted butter and sweet milk, one and a third cups of apples, one teaspoon essence of lemon; baked in pastry. This quantity will make two plates.- Mrs. M. M. D.
CABINET PUDDING. - Sheet of sponge cake and one half pound French candied fruit, apricot, pear, cherries, a lime, and ounce citron; cut citron in shape of leaves. Butter tin mold thickly with cold butter, press the fruit in any pretty designs on bottom and sides of mold, using large fruits for centers and citron leaves around. Cut sponge cake to fit bottom of mold over the fruit, and also line sides with the cake, then put in some of the fruit (cherries), then another layer of cake, then fruit, etc., with last layer of cake, pressing cake firmly in the mold. Make custard of one pint milk, six eggs and quarter pound sugar. Put custard in a pitcher and pour slowly in the mold letting part of custard entirely absorb before adding the rest. When all added, place mold in steamer or in sauce pan two-thirds full of water and steam till firm, about an hour and a half. To test run a fork or small knife down through thickest part, if any liquid appears must cook longer. When done take fron mold, top side down and serve with powdered sugar. To make a plainer pudding, use bread instead of cake and raisins, currants and citron instead of French fruits. - Miss Juliet Corson. CHRISTIANA PUDDING. - Put a layer of sliced bread or biscuit, first dipped well in boiling sweet milk, in a baking dish, then a layer of prune sauce made as for eating, only seeding the prunes, then bread and so on. till the dish is full, bread on top, having sprinkled each layer with a little sugar; pour over this the prune juice and the remainder of scalded milk. To make it richer, bits of butter may be added to each layer; bake in moderate oven from three quarters of an hour to an hour. When cold turn out in a dish and spread whipped cream on top, or it may be served hot with a sauce or spoonful of whipped cream to each dish. This is a splendid pudding, wholesome and inexpensive. - Miss Olga Gollersrud, Christiana. COPENHAGEN PUDDING. -Pare and eighth seven large tart apples, makes two quarts of cut apples, put in a sauce pan with one-half cup water; let cook till tender, then stir in two tablespoons butter and half teacup sugar, mixing and mashing thoroughly. Put this as the bottom layer in a dish in which the pudding is to be served. Then put in spider two and a half teaspoons butter, and when melted add one and half-cups dry bread crumbs one half teacup sugar and one half pound (in the shell) almonds blanched and finely chopped; stir this constantly for about ten minutes or till well mixed; place this while hot as the second layer in the dish, then in their season take one quart of blackberries and one-half teacup sugar and cook to a jam or in winter to a jelly glass of jam (or any fruit may be used); spread this for the third layer. All these can be prepared the day before using; before serving cover with a pint of cream well whipped and sweetened to taste, tablespoon sugar, and flavored with vanilla. This fills a two quart dish and is sufficient for twelve or fourteen persons, and is a delicious desert. Mrs. Mena Jensen, Copenhagen.
CORN MEAL PUDDING.--Scald one quart milk, add one teacup corn meal, boil a few moments and add one quart cold milk, two thirds cup sugar, two eggs and a little salt. Raisins improve it. Bake, stirring occasionally.- Mrs. McCarty, Knoxville, Tenn.
DIXIE PUDDING. - Take light bread, slice, trim off crusts and cut into pieces about two inches square; take green gage plums, remove seeds, make very sweet and spread over the bread squares. Whip thick sweet cream till stiff as in this manner; have cream ice-cold and it is well to set on ice while whipping, whip to a froth, let stand a moment or two till air cells form, then skim off froth into a sieve placed in a bowl, whip the rest of cream and treat froth as before; continue till all the cream is whipped, having poured back the cream that drips into bowl; sweeten and flavor with vanilla; just before serving, place the squares in a desert dish and cover each one with whipped cream. A very showy, excellent dish and when sponge cake squares are used in place of bread, very elegant and delicious. Mrs. Col. Liggett.
FRUIT PUDDING. - Half a pint each of molasses, sugar, butter and sour milk; three eggs, two teaspoons of soda, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and raisins to taste, and flour to make a stiff batter; pour mixture in a buttered cake pan, cover tightly and steam two hours. Do not remove lid until ready to serve. Serve with any sauce likeed. - "A New Orleans Housekeeper." PLUM PUDDING. - Stone a pound of raisins. Prepare a pound of zante currants by putting them into a colander with holes not too large, set that in a pan half full of warm water and stir the currants vigorously. Pour off the water two or three times (the dirt will go through the holes. Spread the currants in a baking pan. Pick over and let dry in oven watching carefully; mince and shred a pound of beef suet. Mix with these in a large pan a pound of stale bread crumbs and half a pound of sifted flour. Beat together in another pan the yolk of six eggs, add three quarters pint of cream or milk, then the well-frothed whites and pour this over the suet, flour, etc., and stir and mix the whole well together, adding one grated nutmeg, tablespoonful cinnamon, half teaspoonful each ginger and ground cloves, teaspoonful salt, one pound pulverized sugar. Boil briskly six hours in a cloth dipped in boiling water and then flour thickly on the inside or in an ornamental mold tied up in a cloth. Have a large pot with plenty of water. To take out of pot without breaking, dip into cold water for a minute or two, then place it in a round, bottomed basin that will just hold it. Untie the cloth and lay bare the pudding down to the edge of the basin then place upon it, upside down, the dish on which it is to be served and
A page of eleven pudding recipes written for cooks who already knew what a tumbler held and what a spider was. The conversions and the few timings that no longer hold are worth sorting out before you start.
- The old measuresA tumbler is roughly 1 cup (8 fl oz); a wine glass is about 2 fl oz; a teacup is about 3/4 cup, not a full one. The almond pudding's "two tumblers rich cream, two wine glasses milk, two of wine" therefore comes to about 2 cups cream and 1/2 cup each of milk and wine.
- Oven temperatures"Quick oven" for the apple charlotte means something in the region of 400-450F. "Moderate" for the Christiana pudding is around 350F, and the stated three-quarters of an hour to an hour is plausible for a bread-and-custard dish at that heat.
- A spiderIn the Copenhagen pudding, a spider is a cast-iron frying pan, originally footed for hearth cooking. Any heavy skillet does the job; the point is even heat while the crumbs and almonds toast for ten minutes.
- Half a pound of almonds in the shellShelled weight is roughly half of that, so figure about 4 oz of nutmeat for the Copenhagen pudding. Blanching means covering the almonds with boiling water for a minute and slipping off the skins; the rose or orange water in the almond pudding is there to keep the paste from turning oily as you pound it, and it is not optional.
- The almond pudding needs longer than half an hourA pound of almonds, ten eggs and two cups of cream in a single mold will not set through in thirty minutes. Steam until a knife run into the centre comes out clean with no free liquid, which is the test the cabinet pudding gives and which applies here too. Expect well over an hour for a large mold.
- Zante currants and the washing methodThese are dried black Corinth grapes, sold today as simply dried currants, and they arrive clean. The colander-and-warm-water routine in the plum pudding was for removing grit and stem from unwashed imported fruit; skip it, but do let currants dry if you have rinsed them.
- Beef suetThe plum pudding depends on shredded raw beef suet, which melts slowly and leaves the crumb open. Ask a butcher for kidney suet, or buy shredded packet suet. Butter substituted straight across gives a denser, greasier pudding.
- Boiling in a clothThe cloth must be scalded, then floured thickly on the inside so the flour makes a skin. Tie it loosely enough for the pudding to swell, keep the water at a steady boil for the full six hours, and top up with boiling water only, never cold.
- ArrowrootUsed both as the thickener in the almond pudding and in its sauce. It sets clear and glossy but breaks down if boiled hard or held hot for long, so stir it in at the end and take the sauce off the heat as soon as it thickens.
- YieldOnly the Copenhagen pudding states a number, twelve to fourteen. The plum pudding at these quantities is a large single pudding serving twelve or more; the apple pudding, as the contributor notes, fills two pie plates.
The Dixie Cook Book belongs to the late nineteenth-century wave of community and regional compilations in which a publisher gathered contributions from named housekeepers and salted them with material from professional cooks. That mixture is visible on this page: alongside Mrs. Col. Liggett and "A New Orleans Housekeeper" sits Juliet Corson, who ran the New York Cooking School and was one of the best-known American cookery teachers of the 1870s and 80s, and her cabinet pudding entry reads like a lesson, with the test for doneness and a plainer version for households without candied apricots. The two European entries are attributed to women in Christiana (an old spelling of Kristiania, now Oslo) and Copenhagen; the Christiana pudding is simply a prune bread pudding and the Copenhagen a layered dish of apple, buttered crumbs and jam under whipped cream. The boiled plum pudding at the end is the oldest thing here by centuries, a descendant of the suet-and-dried-fruit puddings and plum pottages of early modern England that ended up on the Christmas table.