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November 27
Menu: Pea Soup; Boiled Tongue, Raisin Sauce; Rice Balls; Stewed Celery; Tomato and Cress Salad; Graham Pudding; Coffee; cups Graham Pudding-Mix 2 graham flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 2 tablespoons Crisco, 1 teaspoon each cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg, 1 cup currants, 1 cup molasses, 1 egg well beaten, 1 cup milk, 2 teaspoons soda dissolved in 1 tablespoon hot water. Pour in Criscoed mold, cover with Criscoed paper and steam 3 hours. Turn out and serve with milk.
A plain steamed pudding of the sort that appeared on American tables through the whole cold half of the year. The line has been mangled in transcription: read it as 2 cups graham flour, and note that the ingredient list gives no sugar beyond the molasses, which is correct for this style.
- Graham flourCoarse whole-wheat flour, milled with the bran and germ left in. Modern whole-wheat flour is the nearest thing; a stone-ground whole wheat gives the closer texture. Do not substitute graham crackers or all-purpose flour, which will produce a much lighter, blander pudding.
- "Criscoed" mold and paperGrease a 1 1/2 to 2 quart pudding mold or metal bowl thoroughly, and cut a round of parchment, also greased, to sit directly on the batter. The mold should be filled no more than two-thirds; this batter rises considerably from the soda.
- The hinge: a steady, covered steamThe mold must be tightly covered — foil and a tied string will do — and stand on a rack in a pot of gently simmering water reaching halfway up its side. Water that boils hard will work its way in and the pudding turns sodden. Top up with boiling water as it evaporates so the pot never goes dry.
- Three hours is not an exaggerationSteamed puddings genuinely need this long; the interior climbs slowly to temperature and the graham flour needs time to soften. Test with a skewer through the center, which should come out clean, and expect the surface to look dark and set rather than browned.
- Soda and molassesThe two teaspoons of soda are working against the acidity of the molasses, not just as a leavener. Dissolve it in the hot water and stir it in last, then get the pudding into the mold and the steamer without delay.
- CurrantsZante currants — small dried grapes, not fresh red or black currants. Toss them in a little of the flour before folding in so they stay suspended.
- CriscoTwo tablespoons of shortening in this quantity of batter is a small amount, and any solid vegetable shortening or butter will serve. The recipe exists in this book to put Crisco in the reader's hands; the pudding does not depend on it.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; a mold of this size would cut into several servings. "Serve with milk" means cold milk poured over each hot slice. Leftovers reheat well in the steamer.
This is a page from a promotional cookbook: The Story of Crisco was issued by Procter & Gamble after the product's 1911 introduction, and its "Calendar of Dinners" assigned a menu to every day of the year, drawing throughout on the new hydrogenated shortening in place of butter or lard. The pudding itself is much older than the book. Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the temperance preacher and dietary reformer whose 1830s campaign for coarse unsifted wheat flour attached his name permanently to the product; by 1911 "graham" simply meant whole wheat to an American cook, with the moral argument long since worn off. Steamed molasses puddings, spiced heavily and studded with dried fruit, were a common winter sweet in households where the stove was already lit all day and oven space was scarce — the pot on the back of the range did the work unattended. Its calendar date, November 28, places it squarely in the season when a three-hour steam is a benefit rather than a burden.