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Steamed Pudding
Mrs. Arthurs.
One cup suet, half cup molasses, half cup sugar, two eggs, one cup sweet milk, two cups flour, one teaspoonful soda, two teaspoonsful cream tartar, dissolved in the milk, which you add the last thing. Butter a dish or bowl strew raisins on the bottom; steam two hours.
A plain Victorian suet pudding, leavened with the older soda-and-cream-of-tartar pair rather than commercial baking powder. The instructions assume a cook who has steamed puddings all her life, so the vessel, water level and covering all go unmentioned.
- Cover the bowl, or the pudding drownsSteam condensing on the pot lid drips straight into an uncovered basin and makes the top sodden. Tie or crimp a doubled sheet of parchment or foil over the bowl, pleated across the centre so the pudding can rise, before it goes into the pot.
- SuetBeef suet, the hard fat from around the kidneys, grated or chopped fine — not rendered tallow. A butcher can supply it; packaged shredded suet is sold in some shops. One cup grated is roughly 4 oz. Frozen suet grates far more easily than fresh.
- The leaveningOne teaspoon soda with two of cream of tartar is a scratch-mixed baking powder in the usual 1:2 ratio. Reckoned by the standard substitution (about 1/4 teaspoon soda and 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar per teaspoon of baking powder), that is closer to four teaspoons of modern double-acting baking powder, though the molasses gives the soda something acidic to react with regardless.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh milk, named to distinguish it from the sour or buttermilk that older recipes often call for. Whole milk.
- Add the milk last, then moveThe cream of tartar is dissolved in the milk so that the acid and soda do not meet until the final moment. Once combined, get the batter into the buttered bowl and over the water without delay.
- The steaming setupA 1½-quart pudding basin or heatproof bowl, set on a rack or folded cloth in a deep pot, with boiling water reaching halfway up the sides. Keep it at a bare simmer and top up with boiling water as it evaporates — two hours will take a fair amount.
- RaisinsNo quantity is given. Three-quarters of a cup to a cup is in keeping with the batter; strewn on the bottom of the buttered bowl, they end up on top when the pudding is turned out.
- Yield and servingServes six to eight. Turn it out hot and serve with a hard sauce, a warm lemon sauce or thin cream; the pudding is only lightly sweetened and expects one.
Steamed suet puddings were the workhorse dessert of British and North American kitchens through the nineteenth century, made in a bowl over the stove because they needed no oven space and could sit simmering while the rest of dinner was cooked. The Home Cook Book, compiled in Toronto in 1877 from contributions by named local women and generally described as the first Canadian community cookbook, is full of such recipes: brief, unfussy, and written for someone who already knew the method. The leavening comes from soda and cream of tartar, bought as two components and combined by the cook. Molasses here does double duty, sweetening the pudding and supplying acid, a habit carried over from an era when it was considerably cheaper than refined sugar.