Sultana Pudding
27 February 2022 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI made a Sultana Pudding from the 1920s cookery book ("500 Cookery Hints and Recipes: This Book Will Save You Money"). Unfortunately the recipe wasn't too specific about how much liquid to add ("2 small cups of milk"), and I was a bit doubtful as to the results when it originally went into the bowl; I used an ordinary half-pint mug about three-quarters full, but this was clearly too much milk. After three and a half hours' steaming the pudding was still liquid in the middle, and microwaving it for a further three minutes didn't make a lot of difference, although the set bits around the outside were definitely tasty.
In the end I simply dished it out with a spoon and ate it liquid. It was extremely good with cold yoghurt, having a delicious caramel flavour which may have been due to the sultanas and/or to my having used evaporated milk (albeit diluted with two-thirds water). Using ground cornmeal instead of the recommended ground rice may also have had an effect — but polenta is supposed to set solid, after all!
It might be worth trying again with less runny proportions, althoug the three-hour steaming time is pretty laborious even by suet pudding standards. I suspect that as with pancakes (and bread dough) it's a case of needing to know what the intended consistency is in advance and adding sufficient liquid to attain it. And maybe worth looking up microwave equivalent cooking times for steamed puddings, as well. (The recommendation for a 2-pint Christmas pudding is apparently to microwave for 3 minutes, rest for 1 minute, and then microwave for another 3 minutes — so my guess at three minutes for a half-cooked 1–1.5 pint pudding wasn't unreasonable...)
Recipe (typical bare-bones style, with no illustrations):
In the end I simply dished it out with a spoon and ate it liquid. It was extremely good with cold yoghurt, having a delicious caramel flavour which may have been due to the sultanas and/or to my having used evaporated milk (albeit diluted with two-thirds water). Using ground cornmeal instead of the recommended ground rice may also have had an effect — but polenta is supposed to set solid, after all!
It might be worth trying again with less runny proportions, althoug the three-hour steaming time is pretty laborious even by suet pudding standards. I suspect that as with pancakes (and bread dough) it's a case of needing to know what the intended consistency is in advance and adding sufficient liquid to attain it. And maybe worth looking up microwave equivalent cooking times for steamed puddings, as well. (The recommendation for a 2-pint Christmas pudding is apparently to microwave for 3 minutes, rest for 1 minute, and then microwave for another 3 minutes — so my guess at three minutes for a half-cooked 1–1.5 pint pudding wasn't unreasonable...)
Recipe (typical bare-bones style, with no illustrations):
Sultana Pudding.— Put into a pastry-bowl [i.e. mixing bowl] 3 tablespoonsful each of flour, sugar, ground rice and sultanas, also 1 teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda. Stir these well together. Melt 1 good tablespoonful of butter in 2 small cups of milk; gradually stir into the dry ingredients. Put into a greased basin and steam for 3 hours.
