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Lemon Pudding (II)
Mrs. White.
Put in a basin one-fourth pound of flour, the same of sugar, same of bread crumbs and chopped suet, the juice of one good sized lemon, and the peel grated; two eggs, and enough milk to make it the consistency of porridge; boil in a basin for one hour; serve with or without sauce.
A plain Victorian steamed suet pudding, sharpened with a whole lemon. The measurements are all equal weights, which makes it easy to scale, but the method assumes a pudding basin and a pot of simmering water.
- The equal-quarter-poundsFour ounces each of flour, sugar, breadcrumbs and suet works out to roughly 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup sugar, about 2 cups fresh soft breadcrumbs and a scant cup of shredded suet. Weighing rather than measuring by volume keeps the balance the recipe intends.
- "Boil in a basin"The pudding cooks inside a covered basin standing in water, so the batter never touches the liquid; period practice was to keep the water boiling and often well up the basin. Butter a 1-quart pudding basin or heatproof bowl, fill it no more than two-thirds, cover with pleated parchment and foil tied down, and set it in a pot with water reaching at least halfway up the sides. Top up with boiling water as it evaporates.
- One hour is on the short sideAn hour will set a small, shallow basin, but suet needs time to melt out and leave the crumb light. In a deeper 1-quart basin allow 1 1/2 to 2 hours; the pudding is done when a skewer comes out clean and the top springs back.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys, sold shredded and floured in some markets or available from a butcher. Packaged vegetarian suet substitutes directly. Frozen butter grated on the coarse side of a box grater is a common home stand-in, though it gives a denser, richer result.
- Zest before you juiceGrate the peel off the whole lemon first, taking only the yellow. Most of the flavour is in the oil in the skin, not the juice, and a squeezed half is impossible to grate.
- "Consistency of porridge"A soft dropping batter that falls slowly from the spoon, not a pourable one. Expect somewhere around 1/2 cup of milk with two eggs, but add it gradually since breadcrumbs vary enormously in how much they absorb.
- Sauce and yieldServes four to six. "With sauce" would usually suggest something like a sweet lemon sauce thickened with cornstarch, a pouring custard, or hard sauce of butter beaten with sugar; any of the three suits it.
The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) is generally credited as the first fundraising community cookbook compiled in Canada, sold in aid of the Hospital for Sick Children, and its recipes carry the names of the women who submitted them — hence, here, Mrs. White. Puddings like this one are the everyday end of a huge Victorian family of boiled and steamed suet puddings, which stretched from plain roly-poly up to the heavily fruited Christmas pudding. Suet was the working fat of British and British-Canadian baking because it stays solid until well into the cooking, melting late and leaving a light open crumb; a household that rendered its own beef fat had it for nothing. The pudding basin, tied over with a cloth and set in a pot on the back of the stove, freed up oven space and required no attention beyond keeping the water topped up — a practical virtue in a kitchen where the range was already busy with dinner.