Sponge Pudding
Two cupfuls of molasses, two cupfuls sour milk, onehalf cupful of butter, one cupful of raisins, three cupfuls of flour, one teaspoonful soda; spice to taste. Steam three hours.
A plain steamed molasses pudding of the sort that lived on the back of the stove all afternoon. The recipe assumes you know how to rig a steamer and gives no mold size, no yield, and — despite sitting under the heading "Sauce" — no sauce.
- The hinge: steady, gentle steamThe water under the mold should stay at a bare simmer for the full three hours, and the pot must never boil dry. Keep a kettle of boiling water beside it and top up as needed; cold water added to a hot pot will stall the cooking and can crack a ceramic mold.
- Sour milkIn period usage this generally meant milk that had soured naturally, which is not what a carton of pasteurised milk does today. Use buttermilk cup for cup, or stir a tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar into a cup of whole milk and let it stand a few minutes. The acid is what the soda reacts with.
- SodaOne teaspoon of baking soda against two cups each of molasses and sour milk is on the light side by modern habit, and the pudding is meant to be dense rather than cakey. Do not increase it; excess soda in a molasses batter turns the crumb soapy and dark.
- MolassesPeriod molasses was closer to what is now sold as light or full-flavor unsulphured molasses. Blackstrap is a modern by-product and is far more bitter — it will overwhelm the pudding.
- "Spice to taste"For this quantity of batter, a teaspoon of cinnamon with a half teaspoon each of ginger, cloves and nutmeg is in keeping. Grated nutmeg alone would also suit it.
- The moldButter a three-quart pudding basin or tube mold well (the batter runs to more than two quarts), fill it no more than two-thirds, and cover tightly with buttered parchment and foil tied under the rim, or use a lidded mold. Set it on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water reaching halfway up the sides.
- Doneness and yieldAfter three hours a skewer to the center should come out clean and the pudding should have pulled slightly from the sides. Let it stand ten minutes before unmolding. This makes roughly eight to ten servings.
- The missing sauceSauce -- The text gives none. Steamed molasses puddings of this era were commonly served with hard sauce (creamed butter and powdered sugar with a little brandy or vanilla) or a thin foamy egg sauce; either suits it.
- KeepingSteamed puddings improve for a day or two wrapped and refrigerated. Re-steam slices or the whole mold for twenty to thirty minutes rather than microwaving, which dries the crumb.
Steamed puddings like this one are the direct descendants of the English boiled pudding, long cooked in a cloth and later in a metal or earthenware mold. In American kitchens they earned their place for practical reasons: a coal or wood range gave uneven oven heat but reliable simmering, and a pudding steaming on top of the stove needed no watching beyond the water level. Molasses did the sweetening because it was cheaper than refined sugar for most of the century, and it pairs with sour milk and soda in the same way it does in gingerbread — the leavening system predates reliable baking powder and outlived it in recipes like this. The title "Sponge Pudding" is loose; the term more usually denoted a light egg-raised batter, and here it describes something considerably heavier than a sponge.