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Steamed Pudding
2 tablespoons shortening, ½ cup sour milk melted cup molasses teaspoon soda 2 cups flour teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon mixed spice cup chopped nuts or raisins Mix the ingredients in the order given, sifting dry ingredients together. Spice may be cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves or ginger. It is un- its or ginger. It is unnecessary to use butter for shortening, as spice and molasses cover its flavor. Fruit used may be raisins, currants, dates, figs, citron, etc. Any kind of nuts may be used, or part fruit and nuts. Grease molds. This will fill six good-sized molds. Steam 1 to 2 hours. Serve with sauce. 2 cups rice 2 cups milk 1/2 cup chopped dates
A plain molasses steamed pudding of the kind that stretched a little sweetening a long way. Several of the smaller quantities have lost their fractions, so treat the amounts below as the standard proportions for a pudding of this type rather than as certainties.
- The ambiguous amountsMolasses, soda, salt and the fruit are all given as bare "cup" or "teaspoon" with the fraction missing. For a batter built on 2 cups flour and ½ cup sour milk, ½ cup molasses, ½ teaspoon soda, ½ teaspoon salt and ½ to 1 cup fruit or nuts are the usual figures; the soda in particular should not exceed ½ teaspoon or the pudding will taste soapy.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, which no longer exists in the supermarket. Use buttermilk, or stir ½ tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar into ½ cup whole milk and let it stand five minutes. The acid is what activates the soda.
- Shortening"Shortening" in books of this sort generally meant lard or a vegetable fat rather than butter. Melted butter, mild oil or modern shortening all work; the note about spice masking butter's flavour is a thrift argument, not a technical one.
- Molds and coverage"Six good-sized molds" suggests individual cups of roughly 6 to 8 oz. Grease them well, fill only two-thirds full to leave room for rise, and cover each tightly with greased foil or a tied cloth so condensation does not fall into the batter.
- How to steamStand the molds on a rack in a deep pot, add boiling water to come halfway up their sides, and keep it at a bare simmer with the lid on. Top up with boiling water as it evaporates.
- TimingThe recipe gives a range of 1 to 2 hours; small individual molds will be at the short end of it. Test with a skewer at the centre and expect the top to be moist and springy rather than dry.
- Mixed spiceThe book leaves the choice open. A workable blend is 1 teaspoon total made up of cinnamon with a smaller amount of nutmeg, ginger and a pinch of cloves.
- SauceNo sauce is specified. A hard sauce, a lemon sauce or a thin vanilla custard all suit a molasses pudding.
Steamed puddings survived in American cookbooks long after they had become old-fashioned in restaurants, because they need no oven and forgive rough measurement. A molasses-and-sour-milk batter like this one belongs to the tradition that runs back through Indian pudding and boiled plum pudding: molasses was the cheap sweetener of the northeastern kitchen for generations before refined sugar became routine, and its strong flavour made it the natural partner for whatever dried fruit and nuts the house had.