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Suet Pudding
One cup molasses, one of sweet milk, one of suet chopped fine, or half a cup melted butter, one of raisins, half cup currants, two and a half cups flour, half tea-spoon soda; mix well, salt and spice to taste, and steam two hours. - Mrs. S. W. Case.
A plain steamed molasses pudding of the kind that filled out a winter table. The recipe is sound as written; most of what it leaves out is vessel, quantity and heat.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys, sold by butchers and often available frozen and shredded. Chop or grate it cold so it stays in flecks; it melts during steaming and leaves the crumb open. The half cup of melted butter given as an alternative makes a denser, cakier pudding.
- Sweet milkFresh unsoured milk, distinguished from the sour milk also commonly kept in nineteenth-century kitchens, which would have reacted differently with the soda. Use whole milk.
- Soda and molassesThe half teaspoon of soda is there to neutralise the acid in the molasses, which is the only leavening in the batter. Unsulphured dark molasses works; blackstrap is harsh and dries the crumb.
- VesselA two-quart or larger pudding basin or mould, well greased and filled about two-thirds, covered tightly with greased parchment and foil or a floured cloth tied under the rim. Sealing matters here: condensation dripping in makes a sodden top.
- How to steamSet the mould on a rack or folded cloth in a deep pot, add boiling water to come halfway up the sides, cover, and keep it at a bare simmer for the full two hours. Top up with boiling water as it falls; if the pan runs dry the pudding scorches.
- Spice"Spice to taste" in a book of this period usually meant cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and often allspice. About two teaspoons total, weighted toward cinnamon, suits this quantity. Salt: a scant half teaspoon.
- Yield and sauceServes six to eight, turned out hot. Steamed puddings of this kind were customarily served with a sweet sauce -- a hard sauce, or a thin pouring sauce -- and this one is fairly dry without one.
- KeepingSteamed puddings improve on standing. Cool, wrap, refrigerate, and re-steam 30 to 40 minutes to serve.
Steamed suet puddings came to American cookbooks largely from British practice, where a batter or dough bound with chopped beef fat and boiled in a cloth was the standard sweet course long before ovens were common in ordinary kitchens. Molasses rather than sugar marks this as an economical version: molasses was cheap and plentiful in nineteenth-century America, and its acidity gave the cook a use for the small pinch of soda, which had by then come into use alongside the older saleratus. The Dixie Cook-Book, like many community-sourced compilations of its era, prints the recipe under a contributor's name and assumes she need not explain the mould, the cloth or the water bath. The dish is the humble cousin of the Christmas plum pudding, with the same suet, the same raisins and currants, and none of the brandy or long ageing.