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For Sauce (Tablespoonfuls sugar)
4 tablespoonfuls sugar 1/2 teaspoonful salt 1/2 cupful Crisco 2 tablespoonfuls sherry 4 tablespoonfuls blanched and chopped almonds For pudding. Beat eggs, add crumbs, salt, Crisco, sugar, and pineapple cut into small dice. Turn into Criscoed pudding dish and bake in moderate oven until firm. Serve hot or cold with sauce. For sauce. Beat Crisco with sugar to a cream, add salt, sherry, and almonds.
Mrs. Vaughn's Plum Pudding lb. brown sugar 3 eggs ¼ lb. breadcrumbs 1/2 lb. browned flour ½ lb. Crisco 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder 1 teaspoonful salt ½ teaspoonful grated nutmeg 1/4 teaspoonful powdered mace ½ cupful New Orleans molasses ½ cupful brandy (or grape juice) 1/2 lb. seeded raisins 1/4 cupful lemon juice 1/2 lb. sultana raisins 1 lb. crystallized fruits, consisting of pineapple, cherries, figs, orange peel, and citron 1/2 teaspoonful powdered cloves 1 lb. currants ½ teaspoonful powdered cinnamon 1 teaspoonful powdered ginger Chop crystallized fruits, add raisins and currants, then pour brandy (or grape juice) over them and let stand several hours. Cream Crisco and Puddings sugar, add eggs well beaten together, and all other ingredients. Divide into greased mold (small Crisco cans will do) filling two-thirds full and steam steadily for three hours: Turn out while hot and serve with hard sauce.
Sufficient for two medium-sized puddings or one very large one. 1/2 cupful rice 3 cupfuls milk 3/4 cupful sugar 1/4 cupful Crisco
Two puddings and a sauce run together here, and several of the plum pudding's quantities have lost their fractions. What follows covers the parts that can be worked from as written.
- Crisco as the fatCrisco is a hydrogenated vegetable shortening, and in 1913 it was being promoted as a substitute for butter and lard in everything, sauces included. In both puddings you can use butter measure for measure; in the sherry sauce butter gives noticeably better flavour, since nothing here masks a bland fat.
- The sauce is a hard sauceCreaming fat with sugar and beating in liquor and nuts produces a cold, firm sauce that melts over the hot pudding. Add the sherry a teaspoon at a time or the mixture will separate; if it does, beat in a little more sugar.
- "Moderate oven"Usually taken as around 350-375F. The pineapple pudding is set when a knife inserted at the centre comes out clean; expect somewhere in the region of 45 minutes to an hour for a shallow dish.
- Missing weight in the plum puddingThe brown sugar is listed with no weight, only "lb. brown sugar." The breadcrumb and liquid measures read correctly, but you will need to judge the sugar yourself; about a pound suits the scale of the other quantities.
- Browned flourPlain flour toasted in a dry pan or a low oven until it takes on a nutty colour. It was used for depth of flavour and darker colour; it also loses some thickening power.
- New Orleans molassesAn unsulphured cane molasses, lighter and less bitter than blackstrap. Ordinary unsulphured molasses is the closest thing on a supermarket shelf; avoid blackstrap, which will overwhelm the spices.
- Steaming vesselsDo not use empty shortening cans as the book suggests; modern can linings are not made for three hours of wet heat. Use a proper pudding basin or heatproof bowl, two-thirds full, covered with pleated foil or a tied cloth, standing in a pan of simmering water topped up as it evaporates.
- Yield and keepingThe plum pudding makes two medium puddings or one very large one. Steamed puddings of this type keep for weeks wrapped and chilled, and reheat by steaming for about an hour.
The Story of Crisco was published by Procter & Gamble in 1913, a couple of years after the hydrogenated cottonseed shortening was introduced in 1911, and its purpose was to prove that such a fat could stand in for butter and lard anywhere a household fat was called for. That is why Crisco appears in places a cook would not expect it, including a hard sauce, where it does nothing for flavour and everything for the argument. Some recipes carry named attributions, like Mrs. Vaughn's plum pudding here, though the page says nothing about who she was. The alternative of grape juice for brandy is worth noticing: it reflects both the temperance sentiment of the period and the caution of a national advertiser in the years just before Prohibition.