In ,
Dick Chambers typed:
Father Ignatius wrote

But the fact remains, steak and kidney pudding is _not_ a pudding.

It's certainly not a pudding in the AmE sense. I don't know what
AusE pudding is.

Pudding in AusE is like the Boiled Baby recipe we had further up
the thread. A pudding is somehting you steam in a cloth or in a
basin. Eg, Christmas pudding, sticky date pudding.

Or, indeed, Steak and Kidney Pudding.

All this has even made me confused, and I'm a pommie.


ABOUT PUDDINGS

"I can't tell you the attachment for pudding of the Irish, or indeed
English, soul. And it's a thing I dreadfully miss in France---I live in
France---and they haven't a notion of pudding."

--Patrick O'Brian, interviewed by Robert Hass, April 19, 1995

What is pudding? There can be no more important question. Many people
believe pudding began its life as the French /boudin/. The /Oxford English
Dictionary/ suggests several possible common roots for the two words,
including one meaning "guts" and another meaning "to swell." And Larousse
defines /boudiner/ as "to stuff." Any of them could be right---in fact, all
three make sense to us, especially together: stuff a gut and cook it, and it
will swell.

Such are the shared ancestral characteristics of /boudin/ (both /noir/ and
/blanc/), Black Pudding, White Pudding, Blood Pudding or /Blutwurst/, and
what Robert Burns calls the "great chieftain of the pudding race," Haggis.

As far as we know, then, pudding started out on a parallel course with
sausage, then veered off in a more farinaceous direction with the addition
of grains or porridge, and finally shed its guts altogether in favor of
basins and cloths. Take this evolution one step farther and you have
dumplings---but that far we dare not go.

Pudding can be either savory or sweet, depending on context and content;
though to confuse the issue even more, it should be noted that to the
English, it is also a generic word for "dessert." As Mr. O'Brian says,
"after the various solid things, the edible roots and the more or less
edible beef---you say, what's for pudding? and then, it may be flummery, it
may be apple pie---it's any of those delights...."


Suet Pudding

Patrick O'Brian feelingly calls it "the true heroes' delight":

"Captain Aubrey, feeling that he must do honour to the gunroom's feast,
already tolerably damped, held out his plate; and now for the first time he
realized with a pang that a third slice was going to be more of a labour
than a delight: /non sum qualis eram/ drifted up from those remote years
when he was flogged into at least a remote, nodding acquaintance with Latin;
the rest he could not recall. It might have had nothing to do with pudding
at all, but the effect was the same.

'Mr Martin,' he asked, `what is the Latin for pudding, for a pudding of this
kind?'

`Heavens, sir, I cannot tell,' said Martin. `What do you say, Doctor?'

`/Sebi confectio discolor/,' said Stephen. `Will I pour you a glass of wine,
colleague?'"

---The Truelove, 110

Despite Stephen's characterization (/sebi confectio discolor/ means,
literally, "varied suet confections"), it must be confessed that most of the
suet puddings described in the novels, when you boil them down, are very
much alike. Indeed, when we came to study the origins of Spotted Dog (or
Spotted Dick), Plum Duff, and Figgy-Dowdy (not to mention Treacle-Dowdy,
Pandowdy, etc.), we were delighted to discover that "dog," "dick," "duff,"
and "dowdy" all come from the same Old English word meaning ... dough.

This is not to say that there is no variety in suet puddings. A suet pudding
may be boiled, steamed, or baked; it may be tied loosely in a cloth or
packed into a pudding-basin; it may be a solid, doughy mass or a thin pastry
envelope filled with meat or fruit. It is an acquired taste, perhaps---and
we have acquired it all too easily. Worse, we have adopted the traditional
practice of slicing leftover pudding and frying it in butter, and we regret
to inform you that it is very good indeed.


Suet

`Do you know, sir,' said Jack to Professor Graham, `this is the first decent
pudding I have had since I left home. By some mischance the suet was
neglected to be shipped; and you will agree that a spotted dog or a drowned
baby is a hollow mockery, a whited sepulchre, without it is made with suet.
There is an art in puddings, to be sure; but what is art without suet?'

--The Ionian Mission, 83

Suet, with or without art, is fresh beef (or mutton, but that would be
specified) fat taken from the area around the loin or kidney. To prepare it
for use in pudding, remove all bits of meat and connective tissue, and grate
or chop it finely. It is much easier to work with when it is partially
frozen.

Grating suet by hand is a truly dreadful job. At the risk of offending the
Luddites among our readers, we have found that the grating blade of a food
processor produces very good results. We must, however, caution you against
putting suet through a meat grinder or processing it with the chopping blade
of the food processor. Either of these practices will ruin the consistency
of the pudding.


Basic Equipment

The Pudding-Basin

A pudding-basin is a ceramic bowl with a convenient rim expressly designed
to hold a pudding-string in place. If you do not happen to have an English
pudding-basin about you, almost any heatproof bowl or mold of appropriate
size will serve the purpose. (A typical 6-cup basin, such as the one we use
for most of our steamed puddings, measures about 7 inches in diameter across
the top, 3 inches across the bottom, and 4 inches deep.)

The basin should always be greased with butter or suet, depending on the
nature of the pudding.


The Pudding-Cloth

`[The pudding is] wrapped in a piece of sailcloth ... and immersed in a
cauldron of water, and boiled---oh, for at least a watch, sometimes six
hours. And then when it comes out it is well and truly boiled, and if the
sailcloth has been tight, it has a small, close texture, and that is spotted
dog and if you've left it a little loose it has a glutinous surface and
glistens, and that is drowned baby."

--Patrick O'Brian, interviewed by Charlton Heston, April 25, 1995

You can use any square kitchen towel or similar piece of smooth cotton cloth
for this purpose, as long as it is large enough. Not being in the habit of
cooking for an entire crew, we generally use flour-sacking towels,
approximately 30 inches square, and the puddings we produce are sufficient
to feed an average mess (eight to twelve men).


The Pudding-String

Any good stout cotton string will do. We use a relatively thick string,
partly because of its strength, but primarily because when the pudding comes
out of the pot, hot and steaming and rather slippery, it is easier to grasp
and untie a thick string than a thin one. For the same reason, we strongly
recommend tying the string with a bow or a slippery reef knot; it is crucial
that the knot be secure, but it is almost equally important that it be easy
to untie.


The Pot

After several months of back-breaking post-pudding scrubbing, it finally
occurred to us that we could save ourselves a great deal of effort by using
a nonreactive pot; and so it proved. We love our cast aluminum pots for most
purposes, but they do discolor dreadfully when used for boiling or steaming
puddings, especially suet puddings. We have learned the error of our ways,
and we now use stainless steel or enamel.

The size and shape of the pot, naturally, will vary according to the
pudding. In the case of a long one such as Roly-Poly, we find a fish-poacher
answers admirably, and that the basket makes it easy to decant the finished
product. (Our fish-poacher is 18 inches long, and happens to be just the
right size for our recipes; if you are making such a pudding for a crew of
three hundred you will require a much larger one.)


Preparation and Cooking

Depending on the manner of preparation, the consistency of pudding varies
from dense and cakelike to slippery and "agreeably glutinous." Some puddings
can be made in more than one way: Spotted Dog and Christmas Pudding, for
instance, can be either steamed or boiled; Roly-Poly can be either boiled or
baked; and so on. On the other hand, some puddings are defined by shape and
texture as much as by taste, and must by definition be cooked one way and
one way only: Cabinet Pudding, for example, must be steamed in a basin or it
loses all its decorative appeal; whereas Quaking Pudding will not quake
unless it is boiled in a cloth.


To Steam a Pudding in a Basin

Wring out the cloth in hot water, lay it on a flat surface, and flour the
center, making a circle slightly larger than the top circumference of the
basin. Lay the cloth over the pudding, flour side down, and secure it in
place with a string tied snugly under the rim of the basin. For most
puddings, the cloth should be stretched tightly over the basin; for puddings
containing bread it should usually be loose enough to allow for a little
expansion. Tie two opposite corners of the cloth together in a square knot
over the top of the basin, then repeat with the other two corners. You
should be able to lift the pudding-basin by the knots in the cloth.

The water in the pot should come up to within an inch of the top of the
basin. It must be boiling rapidly when you put the pudding in, and should
continue to boil merrily throughout the cooking process. In some cases
(especially that of Christmas Pudding, which boils anywhere from five hours
to four days) you will probably need to replenish the water at least once.
Be sure to use water that is already boiling, so as not to interrupt the
cooking.


To Tie Up a Long Boiled Pudding

Wring out the cloth in hot water, lay it on a flat surface, and flour about
half. Place the pudding on the floured half of the cloth (a rolled pudding
like Roly-Poly should be assembled first, then carefully lifted into place).
Tuck the floured edge of the cloth snugly around the pudding, and roll the
pudding up in the cloth. Some puddings (such as Roly-Poly) should be rolled
as tightly as possible; others (such as Drowned Baby) must be wrapped more
loosely to give them room to expand. Tie a piece of string securely around
the cloth at each end of the pudding. We also find, especially on a tightly
wrapped pudding, that another piece of string tied around the middle helps
it to hold its shape.


To Tie Up a Round Boiled Pudding

The treatment of the cloth varies according to the recipe, and ranges from
nothing at all (as for Dog's Body) to the application of butter and flour
(as for Quaking Pudding)---a nasty, messy process, but well worth it.

This done, and the pudding components in place, gather up the edges of the
cloth, and tie a string securely around the neck of the "bag." A recipe that
calls for a loosely tied cloth implies that the pudding will swell and
require room for expansion; the cloth around it should therefore be slack,
but the string itself must always be tight.


To Boil the Pudding

The pudding should be completely immersed in the boiling water (again, in
some cases the water must be replenished as the pudding cooks). Some
eighteenth-century cooks advocate leaving the pot uncovered, but they don't
explain why; we prefer to cover it, to prevent the water from boiling away
too quickly. To keep a heavy pudding (such as Pease-Pudding) from sticking
to the bottom of the pot, either place a saucer underneath it in the pot, or
move it around from time to time as it is boiling.


"Drowned baby, yes, rarely at home, rarely at home, because it requires an
immense cauldron and an immense amount of boiling and patience. ... Spotted
dog, also known as spotted dick, it's much the same and is very like plum
duff. These things are made---I've not made any of them, I will admit, but
I've seen them made, and I've eaten them with immense appreciation, because
they're very often served at school, where there are a lot of very very
hungry boys to satisfy and they're really good and solid I do assure you,
they outdo potatoes any day in the week for solidity."

--Patrick O'Brian, interviewed by Charlton Heston, April 25, 1995


From /Lobscouse and Spotted Dog: Which It's a Gastronomic Companion to the
Aubrey/Maturin Novels/ by Anne Chotzinoff Grossman & Lisa Grossman Thomas,
pp. 274-8 (a surprisingly scholarly work showing at an Amazon.com near you).
That's the Aubrey/Maturin novels /Master and Commander/ et. seq. by Patrick
O'Brian (no, dear: not Russell Crowe).


--
Nat

"...a light scattering of snarky pedants, and a great many helpful
people who occasionally descend into jackassery, a couple of saints,
and a few wingnuts." --Stephen Calder on, and about, alt.usage.english

Father Ignatius wrote:

[pudding, by no means a surfeit of it]

Suet

`Do you know, sir,' said Jack to Professor Graham, `this is the
first decent pudding I have had since I left home. By some
mischance the suet was neglected to be shipped; and you will agree
that a spotted dog or a drowned baby is a hollow mockery, a whited
sepulchre, without it is made with suet. There is an art in
puddings, to be sure; but what is art without suet?'
--The Ionian Mission, 83

Thank you for these inciteful* extracts, which I consider to be an
eminently fair use of the authors' intellectual property. I now
wistfully request the advice of the experienced: can these dishes be
made using butter instead of suet?
___________________
*About 214,000 googlehits, fully 732 of them real.

CDB wrote:

Thank you for these inciteful* extracts, which I consider to be an
eminently fair use of the authors' intellectual property. I now
wistfully request the advice of the experienced: can these dishes be
made using butter instead of suet?

Pure lard may do, at a pinch, but I think not butter. The end result
should be only slightly browned/golden,(IMHO) I think butter would
alter the overall look and taste.
The pudding calls for suet (which you can buy at a good butcher, though
you may need to order it ahead of time) and it is the suet which gives
it the lightness of texture.
Having been brought up on a diet of English steamed puddings, I don't
recoil at the thought of using or eating suet-based desserts. But some
do. And, in honesty, it's not always that easy to find. Here in
Australia, being a colony and all, we can buy packaged suet (a mix of
suet and wheat flour - 44% suet content) on supermarket shelves
alongside flours, breadcrumbs, yeast etc. Might be worth investigating
whether a similar product is available in your neck of the woods.
When done well, steamed puds are scrumptious! (Longing for winter to
arrive!)

LadyJane
--
"Never trust a skinny cook!"

On Sat 08 Apr 2006 01:38:11p, Thus Spake Zarathustra, or was it CDB?

Father Ignatius wrote:

[pudding, by no means a surfeit of it]

Suet

`Do you know, sir,' said Jack to Professor Graham, `this is the
first decent pudding I have had since I left home. By some
mischance the suet was neglected to be shipped; and you will agree
that a spotted dog or a drowned baby is a hollow mockery, a whited
sepulchre, without it is made with suet. There is an art in
puddings, to be sure; but what is art without suet?' --The Ionian
Mission, 83

Thank you for these inciteful* extracts, which I consider to be an
eminently fair use of the authors' intellectual property. I now
wistfully request the advice of the experienced: can these dishes be
made using butter instead of suet?

Speaking as one who as done it, yes. Suet is not always easy for me to
get. I have to order it from a butcher that is quite a distance away. Use
unsalted butter, freeze it and grate it quickly on a coarse grater. Keep
it frozen until time to mix it into whatever you're making.

--
Wayne Boatwright @¿@¬
_____________________

Wayne Boatwright wrote:
On Sat 08 Apr 2006 01:38:11p, Thus Spake Zarathustra, or was it CDB?

[pudding, by no means a surfeit of it]

[...]

I now
wistfully request the advice of the experienced: can these dishes
be made using butter instead of suet?

Speaking as one who as done it, yes. Suet is not always easy for
me to get. I have to order it from a butcher that is quite a
distance away. Use unsalted butter, freeze it and grate it quickly
on a coarse grater. Keep it frozen until time to mix it into
whatever you're making.

Thank you. I will try it that way.

" Worse, we have adopted the traditional
practice of slicing leftover pudding and frying it in butter, and we regret
to inform you that it is very good indeed."



Good old Scrapple. Dense, lots of seasoning. Fried with eggs for breakfast
(some people pour on syrup.) I think it is mostly regional to NJ, PA, esp.
Philadelphia.
--
Lefty

Life is for learning
The worst I ever had was wonderful

Mike Lyle wrote:
CDB wrote:
Wayne Boatwright wrote:
On Sat 08 Apr 2006 01:38:11p, Thus Spake Zarathustra, or was it
CDB?

[pudding, by no means a surfeit of it]

[...]

I now
wistfully request the advice of the experienced: can these dishes
be made using butter instead of suet?

Speaking as one who as done it, yes. Suet is not always easy for
me to get. I have to order it from a butcher that is quite a
distance away. Use unsalted butter, freeze it and grate it
quickly on a coarse grater. Keep it frozen until time to mix it
into whatever you're making.

Thank you. I will try it that way.

Note, of course, that any cake mixture can be steamed as a pudding
instead of baked as a cake. I've never got round to working out a
table of equivalents, but one made with butter or marge takes about
half the time needed for a suet pud. (Christmas pudding's a special
case, of course, as it's cooked twice -- for connoisseurs, the
interval is a year. I imagine this can only be done with suet.)

Ah, thank you. It's Christmas pudding I have in mind, and I had
thought I ought to get an early start on it. "Only with suet" because
that keeps its shape after the first cooking, or because it is less
likely to go rancid in the interval? I'm considering high-grade
coconut oil too; it might stay fresh as well as suet, but would
probably melt and be incorporated during the first boiling.

On Sun, 09 Apr 2006 16:37:06 GMT, "Lefty" wrote:

" Worse, we have adopted the traditional
practice of slicing leftover pudding and frying it in butter, and we regret
to inform you that it is very good indeed."



Good old Scrapple. Dense, lots of seasoning. Fried with eggs for breakfast
(some people pour on syrup.) I think it is mostly regional to NJ, PA, esp.
Philadelphia.

As good as scrapple may (or may not) be, it is only found in the
Philadelphia metropolitan area (of New Jersey) and remains unknown in
the NYC metropolitan area. The line seems to fall some place between
Princeton and Chester.

--
Al in St. Lou

["Followup-To:" header set to alt.usage.english.]
Al in Dallas wrote:
As good as scrapple may (or may not) be, it is only found in the
Philadelphia metropolitan area (of New Jersey) and remains unknown in
the NYC metropolitan area. The line seems to fall some place between
Princeton and Chester.

Nevertheless, there is such a thing as "Scrapple from the Apple", as jazz
aficionados ought to know.

--
Salvatore Volatile

CDB wrote:
Mike Lyle wrote:
[...]
Note, of course, that any cake mixture can be steamed as a pudding
instead of baked as a cake. I've never got round to working out a
table of equivalents, but one made with butter or marge takes about
half the time needed for a suet pud. (Christmas pudding's a special
case, of course, as it's cooked twice -- for connoisseurs, the
interval is a year. I imagine this can only be done with suet.)

Ah, thank you. It's Christmas pudding I have in mind, and I had
thought I ought to get an early start on it. "Only with suet" because
that keeps its shape after the first cooking, or because it is less
likely to go rancid in the interval? I'm considering high-grade
coconut oil too; it might stay fresh as well as suet, but would
probably melt and be incorporated during the first boiling.

I don't know; but I imagine keeping oxygen out is the main thing. In the
Br Is you can get "vegetable suet" which answers as well as the animal
kind: perhaps that has coconut oil in it. Solid palm oil? They'll
probably now tell us these are worse news than animal fats: I've never
got my head round all the trans-fat hydrogenated etc doctrine, but I
believe I've heard bad news about palm oil in this very newsgroup. Since
I stopped producing meat animals at home, I haven't eaten very much
flesh. (I had a theory, quite untested, that grass-fed beef and lamb was
like wild game animals in having better fats than the steamed-up
commercial kind.)

--
Mike.

"Al in Dallas" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 09 Apr 2006 16:37:06 GMT, "Lefty" wrote:

" Worse, we have adopted the traditional
practice of slicing leftover pudding and frying it in butter, and we
regret
to inform you that it is very good indeed."



Good old Scrapple. Dense, lots of seasoning. Fried with eggs for
breakfast
(some people pour on syrup.) I think it is mostly regional to NJ, PA,
esp.
Philadelphia.

As good as scrapple may (or may not) be, it is only found in the
Philadelphia metropolitan area (of New Jersey) and remains unknown in
the NYC metropolitan area. The line seems to fall some place between
Princeton and Chester.

--
Al in St. Lou

Oddly enough I've seen scrapple sold in the Houston area. Never tasted it
though. Believe it was near the Taylor pork roll in the grocery store.

Chris in Pearland, TX

On Sat, 8 Apr 2006 18:06:53 +0200, "Father Ignatius"
wrote:

ABOUT PUDDINGS

TMI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

--
-denny-
"Do your thoughts call ahead or do they just arrive at your mouth unannounced?"

"It's come as you are, baby."

-over the hedge

On Sun 09 Apr 2006 06:28:09p, Thus Spake Zarathustra, or was it Denny
Wheeler?

On Sat, 8 Apr 2006 18:06:53 +0200, "Father Ignatius"
wrote:

ABOUT PUDDINGS

TMI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You didn't have to read it.

--
Wayne Boatwright @¿@¬
_____________________

On Sun, 09 Apr 2006 13:47:34 -0500, Al in Dallas
wrote:

On Sun, 09 Apr 2006 16:37:06 GMT, "Lefty" wrote:

" Worse, we have adopted the traditional
practice of slicing leftover pudding and frying it in butter, and we regret
to inform you that it is very good indeed."



Good old Scrapple. Dense, lots of seasoning. Fried with eggs for breakfast
(some people pour on syrup.) I think it is mostly regional to NJ, PA, esp.
Philadelphia.

As good as scrapple may (or may not) be, it is only found in the
Philadelphia metropolitan area (of New Jersey) and remains unknown in
the NYC metropolitan area. The line seems to fall some place between
Princeton and Chester.

There is something that is made from salt pork, liver, and corn meal
that is called "Pannhouse" or "Ponhouse" or something like that. One
of my wife's relatives used to make it. It's a Wisconsin thing.

I can't find it on the web, so I must be spelling it incorrectly.


--


Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL

["Followup-To:" header set to alt.usage.english.]
Tony Cooper wrote:
There is something that is made from salt pork, liver, and corn meal
that is called "Pannhouse" or "Ponhouse" or something like that. One
of my wife's relatives used to make it. It's a Wisconsin thing.

I can't find it on the web, so I must be spelling it incorrectly.

There are some hits for "panhaus" that seem to be relevant.

Who added rfc? Crossposting is bad, m'kay?

--
Salvatore Volatile
I hold the copyright in my remarks in this posting. You do not have
permission to crosspost my remarks to another newsgroup, other than in
the form of this posting, with followups restricted to AUE only.
Crossposting is bad, m'kay?