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Plum Pudding
Mrs. H. E. Houghton.
One cup suet, one cup sweet milk, one cup molasses, one cup sugar, one cup currants, two and a half cups raisins, four cups flour, one teaspoon cinnamon, one teaspoon cloves, one teaspoon spice, one teaspoon soda; boil three hours.
A cup-measure steamed pudding of the plainest American sort: no eggs, no brandy, no breadcrumbs, leavened with soda against the acid of the molasses. The instruction that matters is boil — this is steamed in a covered mold or cloth over water, never baked.
- How to boil itGrease your mold or basin and fill it no more than two-thirds; this quantity of batter is large and will need a mold of several quarts, or two smaller ones. Cover tightly with a lid or pleated foil tied down, and set it on a rack in a pot with boiling water reaching halfway up the sides. Keep the water at a bare simmer and top it up with boiling water as it falls. The recipe's own direction is three hours.
- SuetBeef suet, the hard fat from around the kidneys, shredded or grated fine — a cup is roughly 4 oz. Butchers will still sell it if asked, and packaged shredded suet is sold for puddings. Frozen suet grates far more easily than fresh.
- "Spice"In nineteenth-century American books an unqualified "spice" usually means allspice. Ground nutmeg is a defensible substitute if that is what is on hand.
- Soda, not baking powderThe soda here works against the acid of the molasses; do not swap in baking powder. Use a full-flavored unsulphured molasses rather than blackstrap, which is more bitter than what was likely meant here.
- Flour measureFour cups is a great deal of flour for the liquid given. Weigh at about 500 g of all-purpose and expect a very stiff mixture; a little extra milk is fair if it will not drop from the spoon.
- Currants and raisinsDried currants are the small Zante grape, not fresh red currants. Toss the fruit with a spoonful of the measured flour before mixing so it does not sink.
- Doneness and yieldA skewer into the center should come out clean and the pudding should have pulled slightly from the mold. Let it stand ten minutes before turning out. This quantity will serve a dozen or more, and puddings of this kind were commonly sauced -- hard sauce, or a thin sweet cream sauce.
- KeepingSteamed puddings keep well wrapped and chilled for a week or more, and reheat by steaming for 30 to 45 minutes. The flavor improves after a day or two.
Despite the name, there are no plums here and never were: "plum" in English cookery came to mean raisins and dried fruit generally, a usage already old by the time this book was printed, and it stuck to the boiled Christmas pudding long after the fruit itself had changed. What Mrs. Houghton contributes is a thrifty American descendant of that English pudding -- molasses in place of brandy (though a cup of sugar stays), soda in place of eggs and long beating, everything measured in cups so it could be made without scales. Cup measures of this kind are characteristic of community cookbooks, where recipes passed between neighbors by volume rather than by weight. Boiling in a cloth or a tin mold also kept the dish independent of the oven, which mattered in a wood-range kitchen where the fire was wanted for other things.