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Boiled Plum Pudding
Mrs. Hill.
One cup milk, one cup molasses, one cup suet chopped, one cup raisins, one teaspoon soda, three cups flour, half a nutmeg; boil three hours and serve with wine sauce.
A plain suet pudding of the kind meant to be assembled in five minutes and then forgotten over a back burner. The recipe assumes you know how to rig a pudding cloth or basin, so that is where most of the work of translation lies.
- The hinge: keep the water boiling and topped upThe pudding must sit in water at a steady boil for the full three hours, with a lid on the pot. If the level drops below the halfway mark on the basin, or the pot goes off the boil, the centre stays raw and greasy. Keep a kettle of boiling water alongside and top up as needed, never with cold water.
- How to boil itEither a buttered pudding basin with a pleated cover of parchment and foil tied down, or the older method of a floured cloth tied loosely to allow swelling. Stand the basin on a trivet, a folded cloth or an upturned saucer so it does not touch the bottom of the pot.
- SuetBeef suet from a butcher, chopped fine with a little of the flour to stop it clumping, or packaged shredded suet. It should be cold and in small pieces so it melts during cooking and leaves the crumb open. Vegetable shortening will work but gives a duller, flatter flavour.
- Soda and molassesThe teaspoon of soda is raised by the acidity of the molasses, not by any added acid, so this is not an error. Use unsulphured molasses; blackstrap is too bitter for the quantity called for here.
- Half a nutmegA whole nutmeg grates to roughly two to three teaspoons, so this means somewhere between one and one and a half teaspoons of freshly grated nutmeg. That is assertive but in keeping with the style; grate it yourself, as pre-ground nutmeg has usually lost most of its oil.
- Cup measuresTreat the cup as a standard 8 fl oz measure. The batter should be thick enough to drop heavily from a spoon rather than pour; if the flour is dry, an extra spoonful or two of milk brings it right.
- Wine sauceIn this period the term usually means a hard sauce, or a cooked sauce of butter, sugar and a fortified wine such as sherry or Madeira, served warm and poured over. Any butter-and-sugar sauce loosened with a fortified wine will do the job.
- Yield and keepingEnough for eight. It reheats well: steam slices for fifteen minutes, or wrap the whole pudding and steam it for an hour the following day.
Boiled puddings of this kind are the plain weekday descendants of the rich Christmas plum pudding, and by the 1870s the word "plum" had long since stopped meaning plums at all, standing instead for raisins and other dried fruit. What distinguishes this version is molasses in place of the sugar and brandy of the festive article, and a single cup of raisins rather than the pounds of currants, peel and spirits a holiday pudding demanded. That may well reflect what the North American kitchens behind The Home Cook Book had to hand, molasses being generally reckoned the cheaper and more constant sweetener. A pudding that cooks in simmering water needs no baking heat and no attention beyond topping up the pot.