Category: desserts

1940's · 1944 · desserts

Vintage Recipe – Steamed Christmas Fig Pudding with Hard Sauce

Anna L EriksenLeave a comment

 

“So bring us some figgy pudding,

So bring us some figgy pudding,

So bring us some figgy pudding, and a cup of good cheer!”

Ah, figgy pudding – the stuff of Christmas music legend. 

I have fond memories of figgy pudding, but growing up on the other side of the pond my memories are solely tied to the above referenced lyrics. Many a Christmas grade-school concert featured a rousing version of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, entirely out of tune and sung at a volume that would have undoubtedly made Victorian Englanders cringe. 

Yet fond and abundant memories do I have of figgy pudding despite never having tasted it. 

I had every intention of making my own 1944 (and undoubtedly, very Americanized) version of figgy pudding last year. Unfortunately, there was nary a pudding mold to be found and even the great and glorious Amazon couldn’t deliver it faster than mid-February. So, I tabled the idea and made Holiday Fruitcake instead, which I am now realizing with a fair amount of shame, is the last time I posted to this blog. Quelle horreur!

Regardless, I did eventually find my pudding mold quite accidentally in a kitchen supply shop a few weeks after Christmas and made my purchase with glee.

Fast forward 11 months and I excitedly retrieved my pudding mold from the storage cupboard, opened up my 1944 Good Housekeeping cookbook, and…was instantly concerned when I read “1 ⅓ pounds of ground suet”. Oh…no…foiled again?

Thankfully a bit of research revealed that frozen, grated Crisco would make a suitable enough replacement so I elected to go with that option and started baking.

As soon as I started the preparations I was taken back to last Christmas and the fruitcake. Somehow I had managed to forget just how messy and time consuming it is to dice dried fruit. Alas, I persisted with ease until it was time to grate the frozen Crisco. I anticipated a mess and was not disappointed. If I had it to do it again, I would skip this step entirely and just use room temperature shortening as it was practically melted after being handled and grated anyway.

Overall, the recipe was quite easy to make and took exactly 45 minutes from start to steam, as it were. 

To steam the pudding, I used a pot that was just about a half inch larger in diameter than the pudding mold and followed the instructions to fill the pot halfway with boiling water and steam, covered for 2 hours. I checked periodically and added more boiling water from the kettle as needed. With no obvious way to check for doneness, I blindly trusted the recipe and my hob and pulled the mold out of the pot at 2 hours on the nose. I then placed the still-sealed mold on a wire rack and let it rest for 30 minutes before I attempted to release it. My mold is made of some indeterminate metal and I greased it (but didn’t flour it) well with leftover Crisco. The pudding required a bit of encouragement both from a chopstick and the Mister’s firm hand, but it did release cleanly and in one piece.

I left the still-steaming pudding to rest a bit longer while we ate dinner and then served it up with a small spoonful of Hard Sauce, which was very much not the pourable sauce I envisioned but rather a nice, hearty buttercream icing. No matter. The first piece fell apart upon slicing, but the second and third held together nicely. 

And the verdict? The Mister, who is not a fan of overly spicy (meaning, nutmeg, ginger, etc) baked goods proclaimed that it was, in fact, not too spicy at all and the flavour of the figs really came through. My Maman agreed with his take on the spice and said that, while it wasn’t her favorite dessert, she would eat it again if I made it. Both mentioned, and I concur, that the Hard Sauce was unnecessary and was almost a bit too sweet. 

Overall, I was pleased with the pudding. It was a bit drier than I expected it to be and having never had pudding before, I have no idea if that is normal. But, it did have a delicately spiced and figgy flavor which I enjoyed. The Mister rated it 7.75/10 and Maman gave it an 8. I would give it a 6. It was good, but I don’t know if it was worth the effort. I would love to try an authentic British pudding to compare as I’m sure the differences would be striking.

Steamed Christmas Fig Pudding

  • Servings: 8-10 Depending on Slice Size
  • Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

    For the Pudding:
  • 3/4 lb. (2 1/3 c) chopped, dried, whole figs
  • 1 1/2 c. bottled milk or 3/4 c. evaporated milk and 3/4 c. water
  • 1 1/3 c. suet, ground fine
  • 1 1/2 c. soft bread crumbs
  • 3 eggs, well-beaten
  • 1 1/2 c. sifted all-purpose flour
  • 2 1/4 teasp. baking powder
  • 1 c. granulated sugar
  • 1 teasp. nutmeg
  • 3/4 teasp. salt
  • 3 tablespoon. grated orange rind

    • For the Hard Sauce

  • 1/3 c. butter or margarine
  • 1 c. sifted confectioners’ sugar
  • 1 teasp. vanilla extract or brandy
  • Pinch of salt

Directions


Pudding:
Cook the figs with the milk in a double boiler for 20 min. Combine the suet, bread crumbs, and eggs. Add the cooked fig mixture with the sifted dry ingredients and the orange rind, and mix well. Pour into a 2 qt. greased or oiled, covered pudding mold. Steam on top of the range for 2 hours. Serve with Hard Sauce.

Hard Sauce:
Work the butter with a spoon or beater until light and creamy. Then add the sugar gradually, while continuing to work with a spoon or beat with an electric beater until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract, a little at a time, and the salt. Pile lightly in a serving dish, and chili until needed.


I used frozen sticks of Crisco to replace the suet, dried black mission figs, and standard issue white sandwich bread for the breadcrumbs. For the sauce, I used butter and vanilla extract.

Bon appetit and Joyeux Noelle!

1940's · 1944 · desserts

Vintage Recipe – Holiday Fruit Cake

Anna L EriksenLeave a comment

 

I have a confession to make. I have never, not once in my life, eaten a single, solitary bite of fruitcake.

I have no explanation for this. Is it because my Maman doesn’t like it and therefore never made or bought it? Is it because of fruitcake’s longstanding reputation as the King of Holiday Food Jokes? Is it simply because I’ve seen it in the shops in all of its dark brown, slightly gelatinous looking glory and felt no desire at all to try it? Likely all of the above. 

Regardless of the reasoning, I have managed to make it to the start of my fifth decade on this Earth without a crumb of the Christmastime legend passing my lips. 

So when I was perusing my 1944 Good Housekeeping cookbook for Christmas recipes, I nearly skipped right past today’s recipe without giving it a second glance. “Fruitcake,” I mused, YUCK”. But then I stopped and actually read the recipe. (Novel idea, I know.)  And much to my shock, thought “That doesn’t sound THAT bad. Actually, it sounds rather nice.” The recipe looked easy enough and relatively inexpensive, to boot. So I decided to give it a go. 

Right off the bat, however, I faced a completely unexpected hurdle – finding the necessary candied fruit. I never considered that as fruitcake has become more and more of a joke, it had fallen hopelessly out of favour with the younger crowd and that finding the ingredients to make this old-fashioned dessert would be difficult. Thankfully, one of the grocery chains in my area was stocked with an assortment of brightly colored (and potentially radioactive) vittles that may or may not have actually been fruit at some point. 

In addition to believing the conjecture that fruitcake is inedible, for some reason I also assumed it was very difficult to make. Ordinarily, when making recipes for this blog I keep track of how long I spend preparing the dish. This time, however, I chose simply to enjoy the process and not keep tabs of the minute hand. My sense is that it took about 45 minutes to gather and prep all of the ingredients. A little time consuming? Yes. But difficult? Absolutely not. 

So I chopped and I diced and I mixed and I poured. And then, of course, I licked the mixing bowl and became thoroughly befuddled by the entirely light and slightly sweet batter. “Hmmm”, I thought to myself, “That doesn’t taste bad at all.” Off it went into the oven for an hour and half, slowly scenting the air and creating a bakery-like atmosphere. The Mister returned home while it was baking and commented on how nice it smelled. He asked what it was. I told him fruitcake. He was suitably crestfallen and seemed a tad fearful for his tastebuds. 

After letting it cool and removing it from the pan (I used a metal pan), I admit I was a bit concerned. The exterior was…hard. As in hard tack hard. So hard, in fact, I was slightly concerned my bread knife would not be up to the task of sawing through it. I considered, briefly, dispatching the Mister to his shed to retrieve a saw. But alas, I put all my muscle behind my Sabatier serrated knife and managed to hack off three pieces. The inside, thankfully, was moist and tender. I will not lie. I assumed those three pieces would be the only three we would eat. I assumed the cake would dry out even more upon sitting and the Mister would refuse to use one of his power tools to cut it, for fear of breaking his beloved tool. 

Nonetheless, I plated three pieces and served the Mister and my Maman. Never one to beat around the bush, the Mister commented “well, it doesn’t look like those nasty fruitcakes you see at the store” to which my Maman heartily agreed. We cheers’d and all dug in with our forks…only to have the cake completely fall to crumbs. Oh dear. So we put down our cutlery and dug in like savages with our bare hands. And were all shocked that it was, in fact, good. Actually, it was better than good. It was downright delicious. The Mister and my Maman both agreed – the cake itself was lightly flavoured and tasty, the fruit was complimentary but not overpowering and – perhaps most importantly – it had absolutely zero resemblance to the rubbish found in the shops. I commented that I’d never had fruitcake before, to which the Mister replied “I had one piece one time and never again” and pulled a face. 

I asked round the table how many stars out of 10? 7, said the mister. 8, said Maman. Then I asked “Would you actually want me to make this again next Christmas?” And, much to my shock, they both agreed. Perhaps the best testimony is what happened next. The Mister got up and sawed off another slice. And with that I knew it was a winner.

The recipe states that the cake keeps well. I was a little nervous given the rather brick-like resemblance, but I enveloped it in plastic and hoped for the best. And keep it did. I heartily enjoyed the cake daily for tea time over the next week and only at day 9 did it even start to seem a little dry and stale. Not too sweet and not heavy, this holiday fruitcake was the perfect tea time treat and a lovely antidote to the modern tastes for overly sugared deserts.

Overall, I was tickled with how this turned out. I highly recommend you put aside your negative notions and give it a go – you will not be disappointed.

Holiday Fruit Cake

  • Servings: 8-12 Depending on Slice Size
  • Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

  • 1/2 c. shortening
  • 1 c. granulated sugar
  • 3 eggs, well-beaten
  • 1 tablesp. grated lemon rind
  • 1 tablesp. grated orange rind
  • 2 1/2 c. sifted cake flour
  • 1/2 teasp. salt
  • 1 c. chopped seeded raisins
  • 1 c. chopped walnuts
  • 1/2 c. cut-up candied cherries
  • 1/2 c. cut-up candied citron
  • 1/4 c. orange juice

Directions

Work shortening with the back of a spoon until light and fluffy. Then add sugar gradually, while continuing to work with the back of spoon until fluffy. Add eggs and lemon and orange rinds, stirring until thoroughly combined. Sift together flour, salt, and baking powder. Combine 1/2 c. of this flour mixture with combined raisins, walnuts, cherries, and citron. Add remaining flour mixture in halves, alternately with orange juice, to shortening mixture, blending well after each addition. Last, add raisin mixture, and mix well. Pour into a greased and floured 9″ x 5″ x 3″ loaf pan, and bake in a moderate oven of 325 F. for 1 1/2 hrs, or until done. This cake keeps well.


I cheated and used my electric mixer, instead of working with a spoon. I baked my cake in a metal pan and used the standard as a measure of doneness (toothpick inserted in middle).

Bon appetit!

1940's · 1944 · desserts · main dishes · vintage recipes

Vintage Recipes: A 1944 Meal – Tuna Stuffed Peppers and Apple Cheese Crumble

Anna L EriksenLeave a comment

I can’t believe it’s been over a month since I cooked from my 1944 Good Housekeeping Cook Book. Oh, I’ve thought about it numerous times…opened my vintage tome and perused the pages in search of an inspiring recipe. Yet, despite my good intentions nothing made it off the page and into our hungry bellies. You know what they say about good intentions. Well, turns out the road to the fast food drive thru is paved with them as well. 

In my defense, it’s been quite a hectic month: my belle-mere came for a 3 week visit, instead of our two front teeth we all got Covid for Christmas, storms blew through that managed to knock out both our power and the internet, and amongst all of that this business housekeeper managed to find herself a brand spanking new job. Excuses, all of them, but there we have it. No use crying over spilt milk. Get back on the horse, they say, and so I did.

For my first experiment with mid-century cooking in 2024, I decided to make not one but two dishes. It’s unseasonably cold where I live and I was craving something comforting, something warm, and something stick-to-your-ribs. I had seen both of the recipes I chose to make during my first flip-through of the cookbook and have been anxiously awaiting the perfect time to make them. Thanks to Old Man Winter, the opportunity finally presented itself.

For the main course, I made Tuna Stuffed Peppers. I love traditional stuffed peppers. I also love tuna. So I thought this dish would be delicious and I wasn’t wrong. 

From start to finish, it took an hour and half to get this on the table – an hour of prep and a half hour in the oven. The recipe calls for cooked diced potatoes and had I a can or two of potatoes lying around, the prep time would have been cut down by at least 15 minutes. But alas, I had no canned potatoes. I did, however, have 5 pounds of formerly fresh spuds sprouting eyes that needed to be used yesterday. So remembering the old saying “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without”, I happily peeled, diced, measured, and boiled my potatoes. 

Overall, the recipe was very straightforward and easy to make. I learned from my past tuna-related white sauce fiasco and cranked the heat when I made the sauce this time and it came together properly, thank goodness. I stuffed the peppers and put them in a 8×8 glass casserole dish, setting them aside whilst I made dessert.

For dessert, I selected Apple-Cheese Crisp. I’ve made many a fruit crisp in my day, but this one was intriguing due to the addition of cheese. Of course, apple pie and cheddar cheese have long been a dynamic duo – sitting side by side on the dessert plate, not necessarily baking in the same dish. I was very excited to try this. 

The Apple-Cheese Crisp took just over 20 minutes to get oven ready and, again, was very easy to make. The recipe serves 6-7, and it was just us three for dinner so I halved the recipe and the portions were perfect with no leftovers. 

A delightful surprise, the peppers and the dessert both required baking at 350 so I put them in the oven at the same time. The peppers required 30 minutes to bake and the crisp, an hour. The timing was perfect. By the time we were done with dinner, the Mister had just enough time to do the dinner dishes before the apple crisp came out of the oven. 

As to the dishes, I am happy to report that they were both delicious!

The Tuna Stuffed Peppers were just rich and filling enough to be comforting on a cold, winter’s evening without being overly heavy. At first taste they seemed to need salt, but after eating a few more bites it became apparent that they were perfectly seasoned. My Maman gave the dish 4/5, knocking off one star because she doesn’t like green peppers. She thought the filling tasted like a tuna casserole, except stuffed in a pepper. I agree. The peppers themselves gave just a hint of flavor to the tuna stuffing and provided a nice balance. I particularly enjoyed the potatoes – I thought that they not only bumped up the nutrition of the dish but gave a nice flavor as well (as opposed to the standard egg noodles found in traditional tuna casseroles). I would definitely make this dish again. 

And what did The Mister think? 

He, too liked the dish and gave it 4/5. So what caused him to withhold the final point? 

In my very first Dispatch I mentioned Dearest Aunt, who is a cooking legend in our family and whose last visit to our home and whose love of old recipes partially inspired this blog. Dearest Aunt and The Mister share a mutual affection – she likes to feed him and he LOVES to eat her cooking. Her stuffed pepper recipe (which bears no similarity to this one) is one of his favorite things to eat. So when reviewing his adoring wife’s attempt at stuffed peppers, The Mister commented: “I gave it 4/5 stars only because it’s not Dearest Aunt’s. Dearest Aunt has ruined me for stuffed peppers.”

So there you have it. 

On cue, the oven timer went off and the Apple-Cheese Crisp was ready. I was hopeful it would taste as good as it smelled and I was not disappointed.

After one bite, The Mister’s eyebrows went up and he said “Wow!”. My favorite reaction, of course. After the second bite he furrowed his brow and asked what was in the dish. Needless to say, he was gobsmacked when I told him it was cheese. 

My Maman loved it as well. She said it was like apple pie, but with a surprise. She gave it 5/5.

The Mister gave it 4.5/5, explaining that he’s “not a huge apple dessert guy. The cheese saved it from being torturous to eat.” He was in rare form, to be sure. 

I enjoyed it quite a bit as well. I love fruit pies, but pie crust is my sworn enemy. As a result, I have grown to appreciate the simplicity of crumbles, crisps, and cobblers. This recipe was very easy to make and tasted like a good apple pie without all of the frustration and foul language. Ahem. 

Overall, I was pleased as punch with my dinner and would gladly make both dishes again.

Tuna Stuffed Peppers

  • Servings: 4
  • Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

  • 4 large green peppers
  • 2 c. diced cooked potatoes
  • 1, 7 oz can tuna fish (1 c.)
  • 1 tablesp. butter or margarine
  • 1 tablesp. flour
  • 1/2 teasp. salt
  • 1/8 teasp. pepper
  • 1/8 teasp. celery seeds
  • 1 c. evaporated milk
  • 1/2 c. soft bread crumbs
  • 1/3 c. grated processed American Cheddar cheese

Directions

Wash peppers; cut off tops, and remove seeds. Cook in boiling salted water for 10 min.; drain. Combine potatoes and tuna, broken into chunks. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add flour, salt, pepper, and celery seeds and stir smooth; add milk gradually, while stirring, and cook until thickened. Add to potato-tuna mixture, and blend. Fill peppers with this mixture, and top with bread crumbs combined with cheese. Bake in moderate oven of 350 F for 30 minutes. Serves 4.

I didn’t have celery seeds on hand and replaced the salt and celery seeds with 1/2 teaspoon of celery salt. Tuna, at least in my local shops, no longer comes in 7 oz cans so I used 2 standard sized cans of tuna packed in water.

Apple Cheese Crisp

  • Servings: 6-7
  • Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

  • 6 c. cored, pared, sliced apples
  • 1 teasp. cinnamon or mixed cake spice
  • 1 tablesp. lemon juice
  • 1/2 c. corn syrup
  • 1/2 c. granulated sugar
  • 2/3 c. sifted all purpose flour
  • 1/4 teasp. salt
  • 1/3 c. butter or margarine
  • 1/4 lb processed American Cheddar cheese, grated (1 c.)

Directions

Arrange apples in greased, shallow baking dish about 10″ x 6″ x 2″. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Pour lemon juice and corn syrup over apples. Combine sugar, flour, and salt; cut in butter until mixture is consistency of coarse corn meal. Lightly stir in cheese. Top apples with this mixture. Bake, uncovered, in moderate oven of 350 F for 1 hr., or until apples are very tender. Serve warm, with or without cream. Serves 6-7.

Bon Appetit!