Grind the biscuits to flour in the food-chopper.  Wash, stone, and chop the dates.  Grate off the yellow part of the lemon rinds.  Rub the nutter into the biscuit-powder.  Add dates, lemon peel, and flour.  Mix with enough water to make a paste stiff enough for the spoon to just stand up in alone.  Be very particular about this, as the tendency is to add rather too little than too much water, owing to the biscuit-powder absorbing it more slowly.  Put into a greased pudding-basin or mould.  Steam or boil for 5 hours.  “Ixion Kornules” may be used instead of the biscuits, if preferred.  They save the labour of grinding, but they need soaking for an hour in cold water before using.  Well squeeze, add the other ingredients, and moisten with the water squeezed from the kornules.

Another method.—­Use the recipe for Plum Pudding, leaving out all the dried fruit, almonds and sugar, substituting in their place 1 lb. dates or figs.

16.  FIG PUDDING.

Use the recipe for Date Pudding, substituting for the dates washed chopped figs.

17.  JAM ROLL, BOILED.

Make a short crust, roll out, spread with home-made jam, roll up, carefully fastening ends, and tie loosely in a floured pudding-cloth.  Put into fast-boiling water and boil for 1 hour.

18.  JAM ROLL, BAKED.

Mix the paste for the crust just a little stiffer than for the boiled pudding.  Spread with jam and roll up.  Bake on a greased tin for half-an-hour.

19.  MILK PUDDINGS.

Nearly every housewife makes milk puddings, but only one in a hundred can make them properly.  When cooked, the grains should be quite soft and encased with a rich thick cream.  Failure to produce this result simply indicates that the pudding has been cooked too quickly, or that the proportion of grain to milk is too large.

Allow 2 level tablespoons, not a grain more, of cereal (rice, sago, semolina, tapioca) and 1 level tablespoon sugar to every pint of milk.  Put in a pie-dish with a vanilla pod or some strips of lemon rind, and stand for an hour in a warm place, on the hob for example.  Then take out the pod or peel and put into a fairly hot oven.  As soon as the pudding boils, stir it well, and move to a cooler part of the oven.  It should now cook very slowly for 2 hours.

20.  JELLY, ORANGE.

7 juicy oranges, 1 lemon, 6 ozs. lump sugar, water, 1/4 oz. prepared agar-agar.

Rub the skins of the oranges and lemons well with some of the lumps of sugar, and squeeze the juice from the oranges and lemon.  Soak the agar-agar in cold water for half an hour and then thoroughly squeeze.  Warm in 1 gill of water until dissolved.  Put the fruit juice, agar-agar, and enough water to make the liquid up to 1-1/2 pints, into a saucepan.  Bring to the boil.

Pour through a hot strainer into a wet mould.  Turn out when cold.  If difficult to turn out, stand the mould in a basin of warm water for 2 or 3 seconds.