Suet Pudding, Christmas Dessert

My great-great grandmother Mary Emily Sheldon was born February 5, 1869 in Eastford, Connecticut. She wrote her recipes in pencil, in tiny hand-writing, in an old pocket-sized day planner. This is her recipe for suet pudding, a popular Victorian-era Christmas dessert.

Suet pudding was usually served with a vanilla cream sauce, but Mary's recipe seems to combine the ingredients for sauce and pudding into one efficient mixture by using milk instead of water. For a recipe that once appealed to Mary for its ease of preparation, I am putting an awful lot of effort into making it now!

After weeks of waiting for my pure suet order to arrive from the local farmer's co-op, I discovered that is not the suet that Mary used in her pudding. Only fresh suet will do, and I had ordered it dehydrated. Suet is a hard fat around the kidneys and loins of cattle and sheep, so the person to ask for suet is a butcher. Locally, I've now found it at both Big Y and Stop & Shop.

If you are vegetarian or trying to avoid fat in your diet, suet pudding is not for you. If you substitute vegetable shortening, the pudding is heavy and greasy, and no healthier. The unique texture of suet makes a pudding that is light and smooth.

This is what Mary's recipe says:

"Suet Pudding

1 cup suet, chopped fine

1 cup molasses

1 cup sweet milk

1 teaspoonful [baking] soda

1 cup raisins

3 ½ cups flour

1 teaspoonful cinnamon

½ teaspoonful [ground] cloves

Steam three hours."

As you can see, she doesn't leave much in the way of directions, but I will tell you what I did. For chopping the suet, I put some flour on the board and my hands to keep it from sticking. As I chopped, I removed some thin, clear membrane that was still attached. I mixed all of the ingredients in a stainless steel bowl, which I then covered with aluminum foil and placed atop a pot of steaming water as a double boiler. The texture of suet is sensitive to temperature, so the pudding is best served fresh and warm.

It's an easy recipe after all! So try it, serve it to your historically or gastronomically adventurous friends, and don't forget to add it to your Christmas dinner finale!