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Plain Fruit Pudding
Mrs. Hamilton.
One cup of suet, three cups flour, one cup currants, one cup of molasses, one cup of milk, one teaspoon of soda, one of salt, one of ginger, half teaspoon cloves, and one of cinnamon. Steam or boil three or four hours.
A steamed suet pudding of the plainest kind: no eggs, no sugar beyond the molasses, and no leavening but soda reacting with the molasses. The measurements are all cups, so it scales cleanly.
- SuetOne cup means shredded beef kidney fat, chopped or grated fine and rubbed into the flour so no lumps remain. Ask a butcher, or use packaged shredded suet; frozen suet grates far more easily than fresh. Grated frozen unsalted butter is a common modern substitute and gives a softer, less springy crumb.
- Soda and molassesThe teaspoon of soda is the only lift in the pudding and depends on the acidity of the molasses. Use unsulphured molasses rather than blackstrap, which is harsher and can leave a metallic edge, and get the pudding into the steam promptly once the soda is mixed in.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants. Toss them in a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink to the bottom of the basin.
- The vesselFill a greased 2-quart pudding basin or heatproof bowl no more than two-thirds full, cover with pleated parchment and foil, and tie it down. The older method is a floured cloth tied over the top, or the batter boiled in a pudding cloth directly.
- SteamingSet the basin on a trivet or folded cloth in a deep pan, add boiling water halfway up the sides, cover, and keep it at a bare simmer. Check the water every 45 minutes and top up with boiling water; if the pan boils dry the pudding scorches and the basin can crack.
- TimingThree hours suits a single large basin; four suits a bigger pudding or one boiled in a cloth. It is done when a skewer comes out clean and the top springs back. Overrunning by half an hour does no harm here.
- Yield and servingServes six to eight. Turn out hot and serve with hard sauce, a thin lemon or vanilla sauce, or simply cream. Leftovers steam back to life in 20 minutes, or slice and fry in butter.
Steamed suet puddings were the backbone of nineteenth-century domestic cookery because they asked nothing of an oven: a pot on the stove, a basin or a floured cloth, and several hours of inattention. The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) was compiled from contributions by named local women -- here Mrs. Hamilton -- to raise funds for the Hospital for Sick Children, and it was one of the first Canadian community cookbooks of that kind, so its recipes read as household shorthand rather than instruction. "Plain" in the title is usually taken as more than modesty: by a loose convention of the period it tended to mark the pudding as an everyday one, as against the richer Christmas puddings, which might add such things as eggs, brandy, breadcrumbs and peel, and a much longer boil. Molasses does the work sugar would in a costlier recipe, and the currants and warm spices are the whole of its luxury.