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Suet Pudding (One cup suet one of bread)
One cup suet, one of bread crumbs, one of flour, halfcup of milk with half a teaspoonful of soda, one cup molasses, one spoonful cream tartar. If you wish to make it richer, add a cup of currants and a few raisins.
A compressed, cup-measure formula of the kind written for cooks who already knew what a boiled pudding was. The book gives no vessel, no time and no temperature, so the method has to be supplied from period practice.
- It is a steamed puddingNothing in the text says so, but a suet-and-molasses batter of this ratio was normally put into a greased mould or basin of at least six cups' capacity, covered, and steamed in a covered pot with water partway up the sides. Reckon on 2 to 3 hours, topping up with boiling water, and test with a skewer.
- SuetBeef kidney fat, sold shredded by butchers and still available frozen in some markets, or as packaged shredded suet in British groceries. Fresh suet must be stripped of membrane and chopped or grated very fine while cold. Frozen grated butter or vegetable shortening stands in reasonably, though the texture is softer and less light.
- Soda and cream of tartarTogether these are homemade baking powder: half a teaspoon of soda plus a spoonful of cream of tartar. The soda also reacts with the acid in the molasses, which is why the quantity of soda looks small. If substituting commercial baking powder, use about two teaspoons and omit both.
- "One spoonful"Ambiguous in this book, as elsewhere in the period. Given the half-teaspoon of soda specified alongside it, a teaspoon of cream of tartar is the sensible reading rather than a tablespoon.
- MolassesHousehold molasses in nineteenth-century America was usually a lighter, earlier-boil syrup rather than blackstrap. Blackstrap will tend to make the pudding bitter and very dark; unsulphured mild molasses is the closer match.
- Bread crumbsSoft crumbs torn from stale bread, not the dry commercial kind. Dry crumbs absorb far more liquid and will give a dense, tight pudding.
- FruitThe currants are dried Zante currants, not fresh berries. Toss them and the raisins in a little of the measured flour so they do not sink.
- Yield and servingAbout six servings. Serve hot, turned out of the mould, with a hard sauce or a sweetened cream.
Suet puddings are the plainest survivors of the English boiled-pudding tradition, carried into American kitchens and adapted to molasses, which was cheap and commonly stocked, in place of the sugar and brandy of a Christmas pudding. The pudding cloth and the covered basin let a household produce a hot sweet course on a stove already occupied by dinner, which is likely why versions of this recipe turn up in the pudding chapters of community cookbooks of the 1870s and 1880s. The Home Cook Book, compiled in Chicago from contributions by named local women and widely reprinted, is exactly that sort of collection: recipes written cook-to-cook, with the technique left out because everyone reading already had it. The paired soda and cream of tartar suggest a loose date as well, to the years when packaged baking powder was on the market but some cooks are said to have still mixed their own from the two separate tins.