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Steamed Batter Pudding
Mrs. M. G. Hubbell.
Two eggs to two teacups of sour milk, two teaspoons saleratus and salt, stir very thick or it will be heavy ; then add any fruit you wish; steam two hours; eaten with sweetened cream.
A plain steamed pudding of the sort that got made from whatever had soured in the milk pan and whatever fruit was to hand. The instructions assume you already know that flour goes in, and how much.
- The missing ingredientNo flour is listed, yet the whole recipe hinges on it: "stir very thick" means adding flour until you have a stiff drop batter, not a pourable one. For two teacups of sour milk expect somewhere between 2 and 2 1/2 cups of flour, added gradually. The quantity is genuinely not given, so judge by consistency rather than measure.
- TeacupA Victorian teacup in American receipts runs about 3/4 cup, so two teacups is roughly 1 1/2 cups of liquid. Some households used a full 8 oz cup; either works provided you adjust the flour to keep the batter thick.
- SaleratusSaleratus did the work of baking soda, though the nineteenth-century article was potassium bicarbonate or an impure sodium bicarbonate rather than today's refined product. Two teaspoons in this quantity of batter is a great deal of soda and is likely to taste soapy and discolour the crumb; 1 teaspoon is closer to right with sour milk.
- Sour milkThis meant raw milk that had clabbered naturally, which pasteurised milk will not do safely. Use buttermilk, or plain yoghurt thinned with milk; the acid is what the soda reacts with, so do not substitute sweet milk without adding baking powder instead.
- SaltThe "two teaspoons saleratus and salt" is compressed and ambiguous. It most likely means two teaspoons of soda with salt to taste rather than two teaspoons of each, but the original does not say.
- SteamingGrease a two-quart pudding basin or mould, fill it no more than two-thirds so the batter can rise, cover tightly with greased foil or a floured cloth tied down, and stand it on a rack in a covered pot with boiling water halfway up the side. Top up with boiling water as it goes; if the pot boils dry the pudding scorches and the seal breaks.
- The fruit"Any fruit you wish" would have covered dried apples, raisins, currants or preserved berries. Fresh berries release a good deal of juice and will slacken the batter, which is part of why it must start out stiff. Toss dried fruit in a little of the flour so it does not sink.
- Yield and servingServes roughly six to eight, depending on how much flour the batter took. Turn it out hot; the sweetened cream is essentially a thin pouring sauce, cream with sugar stirred in, and it is meant to soak into the pudding rather than sit beside it.
Steamed batter puddings were the economical end of the pudding family: no suet, no eggs to spare beyond two, and no oven required, which mattered in a kitchen where the range was already crowded or where summer heat made baking miserable. The recipe exists because milk soured on its own before refrigeration, and a household that threw out clabbered milk was a wasteful one, so cookbooks of the 1870s carry receipts built around it, sour milk and saleratus together supplying the lift that baking powder would later provide from a single tin. The Home Cook Book (Chicago, first published 1874, and reissued in many editions) was compiled from contributions by named local women and sold for charity, which is why this one arrives as Mrs. M. G. Hubbell's shorthand rather than as a tested formula; she was writing for readers who would have known without being told how thick "very thick" was.