The household cook book

Prepare the day before the pudding is cooked. Wash the currants and pick over carefully; then put them wet into a cooking bowl to stand over night, and all the other ingredients excepting the flour and soda; beat well. The next morning add the flour and soda, and beat, and stir together again; put in the pudding basin or mold, and steam 4 hours. The water must boil in the steamer kettle, and be kept boiling until the pudding is taken up. Hot water from the tea-kettle can be added as needed. CHERRY PUDDING — Put pitted and sweetened cherries an inch deep or so, in the bottom of a pudding dish. Take 1 cup sugar, beaten to a cream with 2 tablespoons butter, add 1 egg, 1 cup milk, 2 cups flour, and 2 teaspoons baking powder; mix well, flavor with nutmeg or lemon, pour over the cherries, and bake. Then turn from the dish, having the fruit on top; and serve with warm sweet sauce. Or (2) cherries can be stirred into a common bread pudding, and then baked — see " Bread Pudding." The Cherry as a cultivated fruit tree is generally supposed to be of Asiatic origin. It belongs to the rose order. It bears a sub-acid fruit which is wholesome, cooling, laxative and antiscorbutic, but if not fully ripe should be eaten cautiously, as it has a tendency to disorder the bowels. Its acid is principally malic. COCOANUT PUDDING— Take nicely buttered slices of bread, sprinkle each one thickly with cocoanut and sugar, and put them into a pie dish. Make a custard of 2 cups milk and 2 eggs, pour it over, -put bits of butter on toj) and bake 1 hour. COCOANUT RICE PUDDING— Soak 1 cup of rice in water 3 hours, then add 1 pint of milk and cook gently until it is tender; beat 5 eggs and 1 cup of white sugar together, add another pint of milk, a little salt and the rice, mix well, flavor with lemon and pour into a buttered bowl and boil steadily for 1 hour; dip the bowl into cold water after it is cooked, and let it stand about 10 minutes, turn out into a flat dish and strew all over with desiccated cocoanut Serve with a thin boiled custard for sauce. CORN PUDDING. 12 ears of corn. 4 eggs, thoroughly beaten. 1 quart of milk. 3 taljlespoons of sugar. Salt and pepper to taste. Scald the corn, then grate it, add the other ingredients, and poui into a pudding dish. Bake slowly. CORN^^STARCH PUDDING. 3 cups milk. 2 tablesj)oons corn=starch — in a 1 teaspoon vanilla. little milk. 2 eggs, beaten light. ^ cup of sugar. Let the milk and sugar boil before putting in the eggs, starch or vanilla. Save out the whites of the eggs for frosting, if you like. Corn=starch, as its name indicates, is the starch extracted from Indian corn. It is light and easily digested but is not very nutritious, as it is about 84^ starch, and 15^ water. Note. — It should be understood that starch to be digestible should be cooked about 20 minutes, and that it is not cooked as soon as swollen, as many cooks imagine. There is danger of cooking corn=starch too short a time, and so leaving it indigestible, and with a raw taste. CRANBERRY PUDDING — Use 1 egg, beaten light, 1 teaspoon soda dissolved in 1 cup milk, and sift 1 heaping teaspoon cream of tartar and a little salt thoroughly into 2 cups flour; add 1 cup of cranberries, and steam 1^ hours. Serve with sweet sauce. COTTAGE PUDDING. 1 cup of suet. 1 egg.