This isn’t the type of pudding you’re thinking of. It’s an old-fashioned, British-style steamed pudding adapted from a 1930 recipe booklet put out by a baking powder company that I found at a yard sale this spring. It’s like a dense cake, but steamed in a pot on the top of your stove, instead of baked in the oven. This sort of pudding goes back to pre-Roman times and makes a lot of sense if you think about how difficult it must have been to keep an oven at a consistent temperature. Using steam to cook would keep the temperature at a steady heat, so once you’d worked out the timing it would be an extremely reliable recipe.
Pudding
- 2 cups (240 g) all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1/3 cup (about 5½ Tablespoons or 75 g) butter
- ½ cup (99 g) sugar
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1 cup (227 g) whole milk
- 1 cup (170 g) dried, sweetened cranberries
Rhubarb Sauce
- About 3 cups (333 g) frozen, chopped rhubarb
- An equal amount, by weight (333 g), sugar
- Zest of 1 lemon
- Juice of ½ lemon
Whisk the dry ingredients together — the flour, baking powder and salt — in a bowl, and set aside.
Cream the butter and sugar together with your electric mixer, then beat in the egg. Add the milk and the dry ingredients a little at a time, alternating between the two. Stir in the cranberries by hand.
Fill a “mold” with a cover with the batter. Back in the day, every kitchen would have a couple of pudding molds. If you have a small Bundt pan, that will work well. Crumple up some waxed paper or parchment paper, then cover the pan, and tie it on with twine. (Yes, I know that sounds like Too Much Trouble, but it really isn’t.) Alternatively, I used a 1-quart glass bowl with a plastic lid, and it worked well.
You probably have a steamer in one of the drawers in your kitchen, but you’ve never been sure what it is. It’s really easy to use. Look up “How to steam a pudding” online and you’ll find any number of short videos that will demonstrate it for you. If everything seems too complicated, place a couple of bricks in the bottom of your largest pot, then pour an inch or so of water into the bottom. Place your mold on top of the bricks, and that will work just as well.
(My only steaming hack is to wet a tea towel and drape it between the top of the pot and its lid, and use it to make a tight seal, so the steam is trapped in the pot.)
Steam the pudding over low heat for two hours.
Meanwhile, cook the chopped rhubarb and sugar together over medium heat in a small saucepan, stirring occasionally, until it comes to a boil. Remove it from the heat and stir in the lemon zest and juice. This makes a sweet but tart sauce that goes spectacularly well with your steamed pudding — and, if you are so inclined, a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Featured photo: Steamed pudding with rhubarb sauce. Photo by John Fladd.