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Steam Pudding
Mrs. Wyllie.
One and a-half cups flour, one and a-half cups suet, one cup of currants, one cup of golden syrup, spices to taste, two teaspoons cream of tartar. Steam four hours.
A plain colonial-style steamed suet pudding, of the kind mixed in one bowl and set over the copper for the afternoon. The measurements are by cup and the method assumes you already know how to fill and cover a pudding basin.
- SuetA cup of suet means shredded beef kidney fat, packed loosely, roughly 4 oz. Packet shredded suet (beef or vegetarian) works directly; if using a block from the butcher, freeze it briefly and grate it coarsely, tossing with a spoonful of the flour so it stays separate.
- Golden syrupStill sold under the same name and unchanged in character — a pale cane treacle, thinner and less bitter than molasses. Warm the cup slightly so it pours clean, and oil the measure first.
- Cream of tartarTwo teaspoons of cream of tartar is the acid half of a leavening pair and does very little without an alkali to react with. Many puddings of this kind were raised by cream of tartar together with baking soda; no soda is listed here, so either it was assumed known or dropped in transcription. If you want the pudding to rise, add half a teaspoon of baking soda with the flour.
- ConsistencyThe mixture as listed has no liquid beyond the syrup, which will give a very stiff paste. A steamed pudding of this size wants a soft dropping consistency — add milk a little at a time until a spoonful falls reluctantly from the spoon.
- Spices"Spices to taste" in a currant pudding of this sort would most often mean mixed spice: cinnamon and nutmeg, with a little clove and ginger. About a teaspoon in total suits this quantity.
- The basin and the coverButter a 2 1/2- to 3-pint (about 1.5 litre) basin, fill it no more than two-thirds, and cover with pleated baking paper and foil tied under the rim. The pleat gives the pudding room to rise; a tight flat cover will split or let water in.
- SteamingSet the basin on a trivet or folded cloth in a pan with boiling water halfway up its sides, lid on, at a bare simmer. Four hours is genuine for a suet pudding — the long gentle heat is what melts the fat out and leaves the crumb light. Top up with boiling water hourly; letting the pan run dry is the one thing that ruins it.
- Yield and servingServes six. Rest five minutes before turning out, and send it to the table hot with custard, cream, or more warmed golden syrup.
Steamed suet puddings travelled everywhere the British kitchen went, and they suited a wood- or coal-fired range particularly well: the pudding sat in its basin over the boiler for half the afternoon, needing no oven and no attention beyond a kettle of water. Golden syrup, refined from cane molasses and sold in tins from the 1880s, gave settler households a cheap, keeping sweetener that did not go hard or sugar in a damp pantry, and it displaced treacle in a great many recipes of this sort. Currants rather than fresh fruit — small dried Zante grapes — were the standard pudding fruit because they shipped well and kept indefinitely.