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Plum Pudding
1 1/2 teaspoons salt. 1½ lb. stale bread crumbs. 1 cup scalded milk. 3/4 cup soft brown sugar. 5 eggs. 1 cup raisins seeded and shredded. 3/4 cup English currants. 1/2 cup English walnut meats chopped. 2/3 cup figs chopped fine. 1/2 cup citron cut in thin shreds. 2/3 cup Cottolene. 1/4 cup brandy. ½ grated nutmeg. 1 teaspoon cinnamon. 1/2 teaspoon mace. ½ teaspoon cloves. 1/2 teaspoons salt.
PROCESS: Add crumbs to milk and let soak one or more hours. Add sugar, yolks of eggs beaten very light, fruits mixed with nut meats and citron. Cream Cottolene and add to first mixture, then brandy and spices sifted together. Fold in whites of eggs beaten stiff; mix thoroughly and turn into a well-greased tube mold and steam five to six hours. Remove from mold to hot serving platter. Garnish with sprays of holly, pour around brandy, light with a taper and send to table en flambeau (in a flame). Serve with Brandy Sauce. 1/2 cup butter.
A classic steamed Christmas pudding, bound with bread crumbs rather than flour, from a book written to promote a now-vanished shortening. Most of the work is in the soaking and the long steam; the batter itself comes together quickly.
- CottoleneA brand of shortening made from cottonseed oil blended with beef stearine, discontinued long ago and the reason this book exists. Use 2/3 cup of any solid vegetable shortening, or butter, or shredded beef suet if you want the traditional texture.
- Nutmeg, cloves and saltThe nutmeg reads half a grated nutmeg and the cloves half a teaspoon, both checked against the printed page. The salt is printed as "1/2 teaspoons" and means half a teaspoon.
- English currantsDried Zante currants, the small black raisins sold simply as currants. Not fresh red or black currants, and not the same as raisins.
- The steam, not the ovenThis is a wet-heat pudding and cannot be baked. Set the covered mold on a rack in a deep pot, water reaching halfway up the mold, cover, and keep the water at a bare simmer, topping it up with boiling water as it drops. Six hours is not an exaggeration for a mold this size.
- Covering the moldThe original specifies only a well-greased tube mold and says nothing about a cover. Grease well, fill no more than two-thirds, and cover tightly with greased foil tied down, or the pudding takes on condensation and turns sodden.
- Bread crumbsHalf a pound of dry, stale crumbs from a plain white loaf, roughly 2 to 4 cups depending on how fine the grind and how loosely packed. Fresh soft crumbs weigh less per cup and will not absorb the milk the same way.
- The flamingWarm a few tablespoons of brandy in a small pan, pour it around the pudding rather than over it, and light it away from the holly, which is dry and burns. Have the platter clear of paper and cloth.
- Brandy sauceThe recipe breaks off at "1/2 cup butter," which appears to be the first ingredient of a Brandy Sauce not reproduced on this page. A hard sauce of that butter creamed with about a cup of powdered sugar and 2 to 3 tablespoons of brandy would suit.
- Yield and keepingServes ten to twelve. Steamed puddings improve after a week or two wrapped and chilled; resteam an hour to reheat before serving.
Plum pudding has contained no plums since at least the eighteenth century, when "plum" still meant any dried fruit, chiefly raisins; the dish descends from the older spiced meat-and-fruit pottages that thickened over time into something sliceable and eventually became fixed to Christmas dinner. What marks this particular version is the shortening: 52 Sunday Dinners was issued as promotional cookery by the makers of Cottolene, a cottonseed-oil compound sold in the decades around 1900 as a cheaper substitute for butter and lard, which is why a traditionally suet-bound pudding here calls for creamed shortening. The flaming presentation and the holly garnish followed English Christmas custom and were common in American cookbooks of the period.