Comfort food at its best

Comfort food comes in many shapes and sizes. It might be a vast pot of soup thick with pulses and vegetables, a generous dish of gently simmering stew or perhaps an indecently large wedge of chocolate cake. But for many of us, if we are seriously in need of something to lighten a dreary grey day, comfort only comes in one form: a pudding basin.

Even the word basin suggests nostalgia from another era, of childhood when proper puddings came with obligatory custard, long before créme fraiche had crossed the English Channel.

This is comfort food at its best, whether you crave warmth, sweetness and stodge – or whether you simply want to feed nostalgia. Once the pudding is steaming away gently, emitting muffled rattling sounds all the while, there is also the anticipation. The expectation of inverting the pudding in a glorious puff of steam, sitting it upright and proud on a dish, then devouring with eagerness – but never with haste. For this is a taste to be savoured and enjoyed. This is slow, comforting food that both reassures and soothes.

Many old cookbooks have wonderful steamed pudding recipes such as sago plum pudding, Winchester pudding (with blackcurrant jam) or Prince Albert pudding (with prunes). There is also an old family favourite, seven-cup pudding which involves the main ingredients being measured out in cups, in those pre-espresso days when everyone drank tea from dainty cups and saucers.

I also found in a 1913 book a recipe for Aeroplane Pudding, made by ...

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• By : Sue Lawrence
• In : Food
• Issue : 43
• Page : 47
• Words : 995