Brown Pudding
Three cupfuls of flour, one cupful of milk, one cupful of molasses, one cupful of suet chopped fine, two cupfuls of raisins, one teaspoonful of powdered mace and cinnamon and half a teaspoonful of cloves and salt, one teaspoonful of soda dissolved in a little of the milk. After mixing well, pour into a slightly covered and well buttered tin mold. Tie this in a strong towel and boil hard for three hours and a half. Citron and currants may be added. A hot liquid sauce flavored with lemon or brandy, is nice to eat with this.
A boiled suet pudding of the plainest sort: flour, molasses, suet and dried fruit, steamed in a covered mold. The whole thing hinges on keeping the water at a steady boil and never letting it drop below the mold.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys, and a butcher will usually supply it on request. Grate or chop it fine while cold; one cup is roughly 5 oz. Shredded packaged suet works, and frozen grated butter is a workable substitute, though the crumb will be softer.
- Soda, not baking powderThe teaspoon of soda is there to react with the acid in the molasses, which is what lifts a batter this dense. Dissolve it in the milk as directed and get the pudding into the water promptly; the rise happens early.
- MolassesUse unsulphured dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and would dominate the spice. Light molasses gives a paler, milder pudding than the name promises.
- The mold and the towel"Slightly covered" most likely means a lid resting loosely on top rather than sealed tight, so steam can escape and the pudding can expand. Fill the buttered mold no more than two-thirds; the batter here comes to roughly two quarts, so allow a three-quart mold. Tying the whole thing in a strong cloth, as directed, helps keep water out; a pudding basin with a pleated foil-and-parchment cover tied with string does the same job.
- Boiling methodStand the mold on a trivet or folded cloth in a deep pot, add boiling water to two-thirds up the sides, and cover. Check every 45 minutes and top up with boiling water; cold water is traditionally avoided on the grounds that the drop in temperature makes the pudding sink.
- Three and a half hours is not an exaggerationA batter this heavy genuinely needs it. It is done when a skewer to the center comes out clean and the pudding pulls slightly from the mold; let it stand 10 minutes before turning out.
- YieldServes 8 to 10 in the modest wedges this richness calls for. It reheats well: re-steam a covered portion for 30 to 40 minutes.
- The sauce"A hot liquid sauce" means a thin pourable one, not a hard butter — flour or cornstarch, water or milk, sugar and butter, thinned to cream consistency and flavored off the heat with lemon or brandy.
Boiled suet puddings tied in a cloth were the workhorse dessert of English and American kitchens for well over two centuries, and they survived into books like this one because they need no oven uner when the range was busy with dinner or when there was no oven worth the name. What marks this as an American version is the cup of molasses standing in for the sugar and the treacle of its English counterparts; molasses was cheap, domestic and, conveniently, acidic enough to work with the chemical leaven, soda, which is doing the job that yeast or long beating once did. The name presumably describes the color. The suggestion to add citron and currants nudges it toward the Christmas plum pudding it is plainly a plain cousin of, and the brandy sauce points the same direction.