Today, I taught Trapolin to make a steamed pudding.  He was a great help doing the holiday baking, he’s been bugging me to learn, and well we could use some comfort food around here, this week.

Puddings in their simplest form were peasant food. Not everyone could afford an oven, but most people could produce a fire and a pot.  A black pudding was a medieval delicacy enjoyed when an animal had been recently slaughtered.   The blood of the animal was mixed with cereal and spices and then stuffed in the intestines and boiled until it thickened because the poor didn’t waste food.  Technically haggis was a black pudding flavored with a bit of pennyroyal.

By the 17th century, these puddings had evolved to include a few more ingredients.  Special bags were used for boiling the puddings and they might be main dishes or desserts.  Pease porridge was a pudding which according to food historian, Alan Davidson consisted only of peas, and a little flavoring: sugar and pepper, and sometimes mint, were commonly used.”   The mixture was then put in a pudding bag and boiled in some water with the bacon it was to be served with. Eventually, the recipes evolved into the lovely dessert I spent my afternoon making but for a good long time, they were sustenance food.

And here is where I will digress for a moment…

There is a comparison to be made between herbalism and steamed puddings.  In its simplest form the practice of using healing herbs was quitesimple.  Terribly poor people probably gathered their herbs, while people with a cottage garden might have grown wormwood alongside some “caboges.”   The cures were employed by people who could neither read nor write and didn’t have enough money to pay the village physician or apothecary. 

It was these simple methods passed down through the generations which kept the poorest classes alive, not herbalists. Like pudding recipes, that concept evolved over the years.

The modern practice of herbalism, which finds its roots in the diagnostic methods utilized by Greek medicine, Chinese medicine or Ayurveda, belonged to the upper classes, and learned people who could read the ancient texts and write new information down.

Even the still-room books and the receipt books of the past were kept by the wealthy families and not all the receipts are representative of folk practice, however they do illustrate the fact that every person had some commonsense notion of how to deal with injuries and disease.

The occasional entry credited as having come from the country folk, gives us a bit of insight as to what their cures looked like, but many of the ingredients used in receipt books were beyond the financial means of the poor.

Today we have unprecedented access to the written word, yet we are more dependent on “learned” experts to parse things out to us than ever before. If you want to read an interesting theory the marketing forces that drove that read For Her Own Good by Ehrenreich and English. ( I can’t believe I am recommending them after the mess tthey made with the witches/healer trope, but this book is better researched.)

Historically ”expert” pontification has been used to frighten us away from doing almost everything for ourselves. Few people have even given a thought to self-care, even though the means to do so in an almost “kingly” manner (by medieval standards) is less financially prohibitive than at any time in history-kind of like the ingredients for my pudding.

And yes, these are the thoughts racing through my head today while I taught Trapolin to make a steamed pudding, so I will now return to that train of thought.

If you’ve never steamed a pudding, take a look a this video.  Now you do need a small pan to use as a basin.   I found mine at a thrift store likely because someone had no idea what they are.  The only ones I could find on amazon were fancy things with lids and were quite expensive, you don’t need one of those.  Any small baking pan or ceramic bowl will do.  The capacity should be about four and one-half cups. Even a one pound coffee can will work.

Ingredients
175 grams of softened butter
3 Tbsp maple syrup
1 Tbsp ground pecans
1 teaspoon vanilla
175 grams golden caster sugar.
3 large eggs (room temperature)
150 grams self-rising flour*
25 grams ground pecans
2 tbsp milk
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, mace or allspice

Preparing the Pudding

1. Grease your mold with some butter.
2. Whisk together the maple syrup, pecans and the vanilla. 
3. Pour them in the basin and
4. Tilt the pan around until the mixture coats the inside of the mold.
   

Making the Pudding

1. Mix together the butter and the sugar until it becomes fluffy and lighter in color.
2. Stir in the eggs one at a time.  
3. Stir in the dry ingredients.
4. Stir in the milk.  
5. Spoon this batter into the mold and then wrap it up according to the video, I posted above.   
6. Put a large soup pot with water in it and a rack or a small inverted glass bowl for the mold to sit on.
7. Fill the pot until the water is half-way up your mold and turn on the heat under the pot. 
8. Bring to a bowl and steam. The pudding will be safely cooked once it reaches an internal temperature of 160°F (72°C) but letting it cook a little longer helps it to develop good flavor. I let mine go until around 170°F (77°C). Alternatively insert a cake tester in the middle and it should come out clean.   
9. Invert the pudding on a serving plate, spoon a bit of custard over it and sprinkle it with more ground pecans.

Custard Sauce

2 cups milk
1/2 cup sugar
5 egg yolks
vanilla

1. Heat the milk in the saucepan until it steams.
2. Separate your egg yolks into a small bowl.
3. Temper your egg yolks by slowing stirring 1/2 cup of the hot milk into your egg yolks. This is to prevent your eggs from cooking and curdling the mixture. It’s how custards and puddings are thickened without additional starches.
4. Stir this mixture back into the saucepan and stir briskly until the mixture thickens slightly. If clumps form, don’t worry on it just strain the sauce through a fine sieve. Eventually you will get the hang of it.
5. Remove it from the heat and stir in the vanilla.

*Self-Rising Flour
2  cups  flour
3 tsp  teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

References

Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999