Steamed puddings, with their subtle blending of flavors, are a traditional cold weather dessert. For generations, cooks regularly made steamed puddings on their wood or coal stoves. The stoves were used for both cooking and heat, so they were hot all day, and it was easy to cook a pudding that needed to be steamed for several hours.
Hundred-year-old cookbooks contain numerous steamed pudding recipes, but as people shifted to more modern heating and cooking methods, steamed pudding become less popular because of their long cooking time (and concerns about the energy cost of steaming a food for several hours). That’s a pity. Steamed puddings make a lovely dessert.
I found a nice recipe for King George’s Pudding in a 1925 cookbook and decided to give it a try. Myth has it that King George I requested steamed pudding for a Christmas feast in the 1700’s, and that the request resulted in him being considered the “pudding king.”
The King George’s Pudding was sweet and moist with a dense texture that is characteristic of steamed puddings. The old recipe says to serve the pudding with a sweet sauce. I decided to make a lovely Lemon Sauce that I previously posted. A Vanilla Sauce or Brandy Sauce would also work well.
Here’s the original recipe:
Cooks regularly update recipes to adapt to changing tastes or to use new ingredients. This recipe clearly is not a replicate of the steamed pudding served at King George’s Christmas feast. It calls for both very traditional pudding ingredients such as suet and an ingredient (flaked cereal) that would have be considered “modern” in 1925. Suet has a high melting point which results in it melting slowly. This gives the pudding a lovely spongy texture. When I made the recipe, I used bran flakes for the flaked cereal.
King George's Pudding with Lemon Sauce
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup suet, finely chopped
1 cup flaked cereal (I used bran flakes.)
1 egg
1/2 cup dark-colored jam (e.g., plum, raspberry, blackberry, currant) (I used currant.)
1/3 cup milk
Step 1. Put flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a mixing bowl; stir to mix. Add chopped suet; stir to coat the suet with the flour mixture. Add flaked cereal; stir until evenly dispersed in the mixture. Set aside.
Step 2. Put the egg in another bowl. Beat egg, then add jam and continue beating until mixed. Add milk and stir. Add this mixture to the bowl with the other ingredients.
Step 3. Put the batter into a greased mold or bowl (1 1/2 pint or larger), cover and steam for 3 hours.
Step 4. Remove bowl or mold from pan or steamer. Let sit for 15 minutes, then unmold.
Step 4. Serve hot with a sweet sauce such as Vanilla Sauce or Lemon Sauce.
I wonder if you could steam it in an Instant Pot instead of cooking it in the oven? My cheesecake turns out beautifully when cooked in my Instant Pot.
I’ve never tried making a steamed pudding in an instant pot, but based on an online search it looks like an instant pot can be used. The Cooking Update site has a post on Mastering the Art of Steaming Pudding in a Pressure Cooker. The Food Science Institute has a post about Making English Plum Pudding Using an Instant Pot.
I’ll have to try it. Thanks for the links.
Suet is no fun to chase down most of the year but I might be able to get it this season.
I wonder about using the steam function on the instant pot also…. (love that thing)
I was at a meat store recently and was surprised to see some suet. I knew that there were lots of old recipes that called for suet, so bought a little and then looked through my hundred-year-old cookbooks for steamed pudding recipes that contained suet.
I found several websites which indicated that an instant pot can be used to make steamed pudding. See my response to Julia for more details.
I haven’t made a steamed pudding in years! They are lots of fun to ignite!
I didn’t put brandy on this pudding, but igniting a steamed pudding is often the best part.
A royal treat with a zesty lemon sauce, I think I will indulge!
I think that you will like it.
Well, who knew that one of our King Georges liked a steamed pudding? That seems homely fare for a monarch!
The Old Royal Naval College – Greenwich has a page about it titled, George I – Pudding King?
When I’m in London, I often go to Greenwich, as it’s near my son and family. I’ll have to follow that up!
If you learn anything more, you’ll have to let me know. I was unfamiliar with the Old Royal Naval College, but thought the webpage was relevant to this post.
It’s definitely worth a visit, and I’ll bear our questions in mind next time I’m in the area.
For years I made a Christmas pudding every year. The ones who truly liked it are no longer here. I used a crock pot for the steaming. Everyone liked the showstopper when the pudding was flamed. Most of the family liked the brandy sauce better than the pudding.
What fun! It’s so impressive when a dessert is flamed.
My mother made steamed puddings, they were a real treat. It wasn’t often we had sweets (dessert), mother was a meat and three veg type of girl. But, she was partial to a steamed pudding!
It’s nice to hear that this post brought back some good food memories.
Interesting! Never had a steamed pudding, maybe I should pull out my instanta pot.
Based on what others say, instant pots sound like a good way to make steamed puddings.
a lemon sauce sounds great. Mum used to make dumplings regularly with suet; it’s pretty old-fashioned these days tho i think you can still get a suet mixture at the grocery store.
Merry festives
sherry
I seldom see modern recipes that call for suet. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw some at a store.
My girlfriend who was an excellent cook made one years back and said it didn’t turn out properly so I never tried it. Good for you to make one, I’m sure it was great with the lemon sauce.
I’ve made several steamed puddings over the years, and they’ve always turned out fine. My sense is that a hundred years ago many cooks regularly made steamed puddings and that they just threw them together, then let them steam for several hours while they did other things. Since I don’t make steamed puddings regularly, each time I make them, I look for information about how to steam puddings. What I always find challenging is trying to navigate several sets of directions for steaming them – the directions that came with my pudding mold says one thing, various online sources say something else, and my mid-century cookbooks (which contain more directions than my hundred-year-old ones) explain how to do it still another way. That said, once I make a few decisions, and proceed, everything always turns out fine.
In case you are interested, here are links to some of the other steamed puddings that I’ve made over the years:
Steamed Ginger Pudding with Vanilla Sauce
Steamed Graham Pudding with Lemon Sauce
Steamed Chocolate Nut Pudding with Hard Sauce
Blueberry Duff
Sheryl, thank you so much for the links.
It looks very pretty. I have made malva pudding (a South African pudding) and it is wonderful.
I just did an online search for malva pudding. It sounds lovely. The way apricot jam is used to flavor that pudding is similar to the way a dark-colored jam is used to flavor this pudding.