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Pound Cake Pudding
Mrs. E. L. Nichols.
One cup sugar, one-half of butter, rub to a cream, add one cup of milk, three eggs, the yolks and whites beaten separately, one teaspoon of soda in the milk, two teaspoons of cream tartar in the flour; fruit; bake or steam an hour.
A contributor's shorthand, written for a cook who already knew what a cake batter should look like. The flour is left out entirely, which is the one thing you have to settle before starting.
- The missing flourNo quantity is given, and there is no way to recover the original intent. A batter of this size (1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 1 cup milk, 3 eggs) needs roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups of flour to hold fruit in suspension and steam properly. Add it gradually and stop when the batter drops thickly from the spoon rather than pouring.
- "One-half of butter"Half a cup, i.e. 4 oz or one stick, understood as half the cup of sugar just measured. Have it soft enough to cream but not melted.
- Soda and cream of tartarThis is baking powder assembled on the spot: 1 tsp soda to 2 tsp cream of tartar is the usual ratio of the period. If substituting commercial baking powder, the equivalent works out at about 4 tsp, and both original ingredients are then omitted. Either way, the leavening acts fast once wet, so get the batter into the pan and into the heat without delay.
- "Fruit"Left to the cook, and in a pudding of this date it most likely means dried fruit: raisins, currants, chopped citron, sometimes candied peel. About 1 to 1 1/2 cups total, tossed in a spoonful of the measured flour so it does not sink.
- BakingNo oven heat is given; a moderate oven of about 350F for the stated hour, in a buttered loaf pan or 8-inch round, is a reasonable modern reading. Test with a skewer at the center; the fruit makes the crumb heavy and it can read as underdone when it is not.
- SteamingButter a mold or basin, fill no more than two-thirds, cover tightly with a lid or pleated foil, and set on a rack in a pot with boiling water halfway up the sides. Keep it at a steady simmer and top up with boiling water as needed for the full hour. Steamed, it comes out pale and moist rather than crusted.
- Yield and servingEight to ten servings. Puddings like this were sent to table warm with a sweet sauce — hard sauce, or a thin lemon or vanilla sauce — rather than eaten plain like cake.
The Home Cook Book (Chicago, commonly dated 1874, with later printings) was compiled from recipes contributed by named local women, which is why this one arrives under Mrs. E. L. Nichols's name. The title marks it as a household economy: true pound cake took a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs and flour, an expensive and laborious thing, while this keeps the rich creamed-butter method and cuts the proportions down to a single cup of sugar and half of butter, stretched with milk and lifted with chemical leavening. That leavening is the period detail worth noticing: soda with cream of tartar, measured separately into the wet and dry ingredients, was how American cooks made their own baking powder before ready-mixed brands became universal in the last decades of the century. The instruction to "bake or steam" reflects a time when the same batter could go into the oven as cake or into a covered mold over the fire as pudding, depending on what the stove was already doing.