The eggs for all sorts of puddings in which they are used, should be well beaten, and then strained. If hot milk is used, the eggs should be added after all the other ingredients. Milk for pumpkin, squash, cocoanut, tapioca, ground rice, sago, arrowroot, and sweet potato puddings, should be boiled; for bread and plum puddings also, unless the bread is soaked in milk over night. When suet is used in puddings, it should be chopped fine as possible.

In making batter puddings, but a small portion of the milk should be put to the flour at first, as it will be difficult to stir out the little lumps, if the whole quantity is mixed together at once. After the flour is stirred smooth, in a part of the* milk, add the eggs not beaten, and beat the mixture well; then add the remainder of the milk, and stir all together till equally mixed. A flour pudding is much lighter, when the materials are all beaten together, than if the eggs are done separately. When berries or cherries are to be used, put them in last. A batter pudding, with berries, requires at least a third more flour than one without. For cherry pudding but a small addition of flour is needed.

A buttered earthen bowl, with a cloth tied up close over it, is a very good thing in which to boil a pudding or dumpling; but some persons think they are lighter boiled in a cloth. A large square of thick tow or hemp cloth does very well; but if a bag is preferred, it should be so cut that the bottom will be several inches narrower than the top, and the corners rounded. The seam should be stitched close with a coarse thread on one side, and then turned and stitched again on the other, in order to secure the pudding from the water. When used, let the seam be outside. A strong twine, a yard long, should be sewed at the middle to the seam, about three inches from the top of the bag. When the bag is to be used, wring it in cold water, and sprinkle the inside thick with flour,* and lay it in a dish; pour in the batter and tie up the bag quickly, drawing the string as tight as possible. Allow a little room for the pudding to swell. (An Indian pudding made with cold milk, swells more than any other.) Lay it immediately into the boiling pot, and after ten minutes, turn it over to prevent the flour from settling on one side. If there is fruit in the pudding, it should be turned three or four times during the first half hour. Keep it covered by adding water from the tea-kettle if necessary, and be careful that it boils steadily. If it does not, the pudding will be watery. When you take it up, plunge it for a moment in a pan of cold water; then pour off the water, untie the twine, and gently lay back the top of the bag. Have a dish ready, and turn the pudding out upon it. A batter pudding without berries cooks very nicely in a tin pudding pan, set upright in a kettle of bulling water.

To cut a boiled pudding without making it heavy, lay the knife, first one side and then the other, upon it, long enough to warm the blade.

* Some persons prefer to spread the inside with butter and then flour it. Perhaps this method excludes the water most effectually. Either way does well. Always butter the dish in which a pudding is to be baked.

If these directions seem needlessly minute, it should be re-membered that those things which seem perfectly obvious to the experienced, are often very perplexing to the uninitiated.