Recipe: Great-Grandma Williamson's Carrot Pudding

Great-Grandma Williamson's Carrot Pudding
rec.food.cooking/Dennis P. Harris

This recipe was written in my great grandmother's handwriting in the ancient falling-apart-cookbook-in-a-ziploc that my mother inherited years ago...

From Wisconsin, early 1900s:

1 cup grated carrots
1 cup grated potatoes
1 cup flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup (1 cube) butter
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp each ground cinnamon, ground cloves, ground nutmeg
1 cup raisins
1 cup dried currants (you can substitute more raisins, and I have substituted dried cranberries with success)
1 cup citron
1 cup crushed walnuts

Save, rinse, and thoroughly wash vegetable or soup cans for several weeks prior to making this recipe. You will need about half a dozen cans.

Allow butter to warm to room temperature. Grate carrots and peeled potatoes into mixing bowl. Sift together into bowl flour, soda, and spices, stirring slowly into grated vegetables. Add softened butter and stir in --- carrots and spuds will weep liquid. Slowly stir in sugar.

Let batter rest for 5 minutes and stir in walnuts, fruit, and citron before spooning into cans, tapping to elminate air pockets. Fill cans 2/3 full. Do not overfill, because batter will expand when cooked.

Cover tops of cans with aluminum foil and place on rack in 2-3 inch water bath in large pot. Steam at high simmer for 2 hours, making sure that cans are not touching the bottom or sides of the steamer pot.

Serve piping hot with hard sauce (very traditional, recipe is in Joy of Cooking, but to me it's sickenly oversweet) or high quality vanilla ice cream (which we prefer now).

This pudding can be steamed ahead of time and kept covered and refrigerated for several days, but it should be heated piping hot just before serving.