An easy dish…. but…

Here’s an old recipe for a very easy dish, an all-in-one sort of dinner using up leftovers, I guess… easy, but would anyone these days want it?

SAVOURY CARROT PUDDING

• ½lb grated carrots
• l lb of cooked and sieved potatoes
• 1 lb  of sausage meat
• salt, pepper to taste and a grate of nutmeg
• 1 teaspoonful of chopped parsley
• 1 small onion (peeled and finely chopped)
• 1 egg (dried or fresh)
• milk or stock if necessary

1. put the carrots, potato, onion, and sausage meat into a basin, and mix thoroughly
2.  add to this the parsley seasoning, and the egg beaten up
3. mix all the ingredients well together, adding a little milk or stock if the mixture is found to be too dry
4. put this mixture into a greased pudding basin or mould, cover, and steam for two hours
5. turn out onto a hot dish, and serve with brown sauce or nicely seasoned gravy – meat or vegetable

I have some sausage meat, should I try this? Maybe to go with it I could make these:

OATMEAL BISCUITS

• 3 oz of flour
•  3 oz of medium oatmeal
• 2 oz of lard or bacon fat (if possible) or 2 oz of dripping
• ¼ teaspoonful of carbonate of soda
• ½  teaspoonful of cream of tartar
• a little milk or water

1. mix the dry ingredients together
2. rub in the fat, mix to a dough with the milk
3. turn onto a floured board, roll out  and cut into round biscuits with a cutter
4. place on a greased baking sheet, and bake in a fairly hot oven for about 15 minutes

… and follow it with this?

GOLDEN PUDDING

• 3 teacupfuls (5 oz) of breadcrumbs
• 1 good teacupful of  suet
• 1 one good teacupful of sugar
• ¼ tsp of salt
• 1 egg beaten in ½ cupful of milk
• 2 good tbsp (about 6 oz)  of orange marmalade

1. mix all the dry ingredients
2. add the egg and milk mixture
3. steam in a greased mould  or basin for about three hours
4. custard sauce or cornflour sauce should be served with the pudding

These recipes each and certainly the menu as a whole is what my dad would call ‘a steadier’. In actual fact these recipes were in an Australian newspaper printed nearly a hundred years ago in Brisbane – I’m sure the weather would have still been quite warm as the year headed into autumn, but maybe people had heartier appetites then, or worked harder to make one!