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For Pudding (Cupful grated raw potatoes)
1 cupful brown sugar. 1 cupful grated carrots. 1 cupful grated raw potatoes 3/4 cupful Crisco 1 cupful seeded raisins ½ cupful breadcrumbs ½ cupful milk 1½ cupfuls flour 1 teaspoonful salt 1 teaspoonful baking powder 1 teaspoonful mixed spices 1 cupful currants Prune sauce Puddings
The page as printed gives the ingredient list but no method — the instructions have dropped out. What follows is what a cook needs to reconstruct it as the boiled or steamed pudding it plainly is.
- The missing methodPuddings of this type are mixed to a stiff batter, packed into a well-greased mould or basin filled about three-quarters, covered tightly with greased paper or foil, and steamed 2 1/2 to 3 hours over gently simmering water. Top up the water as it boils away; a pudding that boils dry will scorch.
- Crisco, then and nowIn 1913 Crisco was hydrogenated cottonseed oil, firm and neutral at room temperature, sold as a substitute for suet and lard. Modern Crisco is soybean and palm based and was reformulated to be labelled 0 g trans fat per serving, but it behaves the same way here. 3/4 cupful is 12 tablespoons; work it in soft, not melted.
- No sugarThere is no sweetener in the printed list; with the method missing it is impossible to say whether sugar was omitted by design or lost with the instructions. Puddings of this style often lean on the raisins, currants and prune sauce for sweetness. If you want a sweeter result, 1/4 cup brown sugar will not upset the structure.
- Grated raw potatoGrate it directly into the bowl and mix at once, or it will oxidize grey. The starch and moisture take the place of some of the egg and fat in older suet recipes; the pudding is dense and moist rather than light.
- Mixed spicesThe period blend is roughly cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves and sometimes mace or ginger. Any modern mixed spice or pumpkin-pie spice works; one teaspoon in this quantity is restrained.
- BreadcrumbsThe recipe does not specify; either dry crumbs from stale bread or fresh crumbs will serve, though not seasoned packaged crumbs. Fresh crumbs pack the batter tighter and may want a slightly longer steam.
- CurrantsZante currants — small dried grapes — not fresh red or black currants. If they are stiff, soak them and the raisins in hot water for ten minutes and drain well.
- Prune saucePresumably a separate recipe elsewhere in the book; the usual form is stewed prunes pressed through a sieve, thinned with their cooking liquid and sweetened, served warm over the slices.
- YieldAbout a 2-quart pudding, serving six to eight. It keeps several days wrapped and cold, and reheats well by steaming for 20 minutes.
The Story of Crisco (1913), written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, was published two years after Crisco itself went on sale — the first widely marketed hydrogenated vegetable shortening, and a product that needed recipes before anyone knew what to do with it. Puddings were the obvious battleground: the British boiled pudding tradition that American cooks inherited ran on beef suet, and a shortening that could stand in for suet was Crisco's clearest selling point. The company also pressed the point that a vegetable fat suited households keeping kosher or avoiding animal fats, an argument documented in Crisco's marketing more broadly. The potato here is not a novelty either; grated raw potato was long used in cheaper puddings to add bulk and moisture where eggs and dried fruit were dear, and recipes of this shape appear in English cookery well before Crisco existed.