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Fruit Cake Pudding
Follow the recipe for Butterscotch Pudding, substituting Karo, Red Label. When half cooked, stir in one-fourth cup stoned, Label.
When half cooked, stir in one-fourth cup stoned, quartered dates, one-fourth cup raisins, two tablespoons chopped, candied orange peel or candied pineapple, and a little citron. Flavor with two or three drops each, cinnamon and clove extracts , chill and serve with light or whipped cream.
This is a variation rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you already have the book's Butterscotch Pudding in front of you, which is a milk-and-cornstarch (or egg-thickened) pudding sweetened with syrup and brown sugar. A few of its terms no longer mean what they did.
- The garbled lineThe phrase "stoned, Label. When half cooked, stir in one-fourth cup stoned," is a duplicated line in the text as it comes down to us. Read it as one instruction: when the pudding is half cooked, stir in the fruit.
- Karo Red LabelKaro was sold in graded labels; Red Label was the dark, full-flavored corn syrup, as against the Blue and Crystal White grades. Dark corn syrup is the direct modern equivalent, and it is what gives this pudding its molasses-ish, butterscotch color.
- StonedSimply pitted. Dates then came whole with stones in; today buy pitted dates and quarter them.
- CitronCandied citron peel, from the thick-rinded citron fruit, not lemon and not the candied citron melon sold in some regions for mincemeat. It is stocked mainly around the winter baking season; candied lemon peel is the closest common substitute.
- Cinnamon and clove extractsThese were alcohol solutions of the spice oils, sold alongside vanilla, and two or three drops was a real dose. If you cannot find them, use a scant quarter teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a pinch of ground cloves stirred in with the fruit instead.
- "When half cooked"Add the fruit partway through cooking, before the pudding has fully thickened. With a cornstarch base that is roughly the moment it begins to thicken visibly.
- ChillingPour into serving dishes and lay plastic wrap directly on the surface if you dislike the skin that forms. Two hours in the refrigerator is enough for a set.
- YieldThe yield is governed by the base Butterscotch Pudding recipe, which is not reproduced here; the added fruit will stretch it by a portion or so.
This comes from one of the promotional cookbooks issued by the makers of Karo syrup, which is why an ordinary dessert is specified down to the label color on the can. Corn syrup was industrially new in the late nineteenth century and needed teaching: the recipes are written as chains of substitutions off a few base formulas so that a single syrup could account for a dozen dishes. The dessert itself borrows the flavor signature of a rich fruit cake -- dates, raisins, candied peel, citron, cinnamon and clove -- and puts it into something quick and cheap. Bottled spice extracts, common on grocery shelves in this period and now largely gone from them, let a cook reach for that flavor without a spice box.