Break three eggs in a basin with as much salt as will lie on a sixpence; beat them well together, and then add four ounces of flour; beat it into a smooth batter, and by degrees add half a pint of milk: have your saucepan ready boiling, and butter an earthen mould well, put the pudding in, and tie it tight over with a pudding-cloth, and boil it one hour and a quarter. Or, put it in a dish that you have well buttered, and bake it three quarters of an hour.
Currants washed and picked clean, or raisins stoned, are good in this pudding, and it is then called a black cap: or, add loaf sugar, and a little nutmeg and ginger without the fruit,—it is very good that way; serve it with wine sauce.
Apple Pudding boiled.—(No. 112.)
Chop four ounces of beef suet very fine, or two ounces of butter, lard, or dripping; but the suet makes the best and lightest crust; put it on the paste-board, with eight ounces of flour, and a salt-spoonful of salt, mix it well together with your hands, and then put it all of a heap, and make a hole in the middle; break one egg in it, stir it well together with your finger, and by degrees infuse as much water as will make it of a stiff paste: roll it out two or three times, with the rolling-pin, and then roll it large enough to receive thirteen ounces of apples. It will look neater if boiled in a basin, well buttered, than when boiled in a pudding-cloth, well floured; boil it an hour and three quarters: but the surest way is to stew the apples first in a stew-pan, with a wine-glassful of water, and then one hour will boil it. Some people like it flavoured with cloves and lemon-peel, and sweeten it with two ounces of sugar.
Gooseberries, currants, raspberries, and cherries, damsons, and various plums and fruits, are made into puddings with the same crust directed for apple puddings.
Apple Dumplings.—(No. 113.)
Make paste the same as for apple pudding, divide it into as many pieces as you want dumplings, peel the apples and core them, then roll out your paste large enough, and put in the apples; close it all round, and tie them in pudding-cloths very tight; one hour will boil them: and when you take them up, just dip them in cold water, and put them in a cup the size of the dumpling while you untie them, and they will turn out without breaking.
Suet Pudding or Dumplings.—(No. 114.)
Chop six ounces of suet very fine: put it in a basin with six ounces of flour, two ounces of bread-crumbs, and a tea-spoonful of salt; stir it all well together: beat two eggs on a plate, add to them six table-spoonfuls of milk, put it by degrees into the basin, and stir it all well together; divide it into six dumplings, and tie them separate, previously dredging the cloth lightly with flour. Boil them one hour.
This is very good the next day fried in a little butter. The above will make a good pudding, boiled in an earthenware mould, with the addition of one more egg, a little more milk, and two ounces of suet. Boil it two hours.