Fig Pudding
One-half pound of figs, one-quarter of a pound of stale bread crumbled fine, three tablespoonfuls of sugar, three tablespoonfuls of butter, two eggs, three-quarters of a cupful of milk. Chop the figs fine, add the bread crumbs, sugar, beaten eggs, milk and butter melted. Turn into a well greased mold, cover and steam for three hours. Serve with liquid sauce.
A plain steamed suet-less pudding that relies on figs for sweetness and stale bread for structure. The mixture is quite stiff before steaming, which is correct.
- Weights and measuresHalf a pound of dried figs is about 1 1/2 cups once chopped; a quarter pound of crumbs is roughly 2 cups loosely packed. Three-quarters of a cupful is 6 fl oz.
- The figsThese are dried figs, not fresh. Stem them and, if they have dried hard, soak them in hot water or milk for 20 minutes before chopping so the pudding does not end up with leathery flecks.
- Stale breadThe recipe wants genuinely dry crumbs from a day-or-two-old loaf, not packaged dried crumbs, which are far finer and will absorb the milk into paste. Tear and rub the bread by hand.
- Melted butterLet it cool a little before it goes in with the beaten eggs, or it will set threads of cooked egg through the batter.
- The mold and the steamingThe recipe does not give a size; a 1 1/2- to 2-quart pudding basin or covered mold, filled no more than two-thirds. Cover tightly with a lid or pleated foil tied down, stand it on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water halfway up the sides, and keep the water at a bare simmer, topping up with boiling water as it falls. Three hours is not excessive for a steamed pudding of this density.
- TestingA skewer into the center should come out clean and the pudding should have pulled slightly from the sides. Let it stand 10 minutes before turning out or it will slump.
- "Liquid sauce"Period shorthand for a thin pourable pudding sauce rather than a hard sauce -- typically butter, sugar and boiling water thickened slightly, flavored with vanilla, lemon or brandy.
- YieldSix modest servings. It reheats well by re-steaming for 30 minutes.
Steamed fig pudding belongs to the long English line of boiled and steamed puddings that American cookbooks carried well into the twentieth century, and it is a frugal member of the family: no suet, no brandy-soaked fruit, just dried figs, stale bread and a little butter. Bread-crumb puddings existed largely to use up the end of a loaf in households that baked or bought bread daily and had no way to keep it fresh, and cookery writers of the 1890s and 1900s printed dozens of variations under names like cabinet, canary and fig pudding. Dried figs, mostly Smyrna imports at the time, appear constantly in the puddings and cakes of the era. The three-hour steam reflects a kitchen built around a coal range that stayed hot all afternoon.