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AMBER PUDDING (another way)
Shred finely half a pound of beef suet without skin, and dredge a little flour over it to prevent it adhering. Mix it with a quarter of a pound of flour, four ounces of bread-crumbs, two table-spoonfuls of sugar, the grated rind of a lemon, three eggs well beaten, and three table-spoonfuls of orange marmalade. Beat all well together, put the mixture into a buttered mould, and boil for three hours. Serve with wine sauce. Sufficient for six persons. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
A standard Victorian boiled suet pudding, lifted by marmalade and lemon. Nothing here is difficult, but the boiling method assumes equipment and habits that have largely gone.
- The suetHalf a pound is 225 g. Shredded packet suet (beef or vegetable) works directly and needs no flouring; if you are starting from a lump of fresh beef suet, freeze it briefly and grate it, then toss with a spoonful of the measured flour so the shreds stay separate.
- MeasuresA quarter pound of flour is about 115 g (roughly a scant cup), four ounces of breadcrumbs about 115 g; the recipe does not specify whether these are fresh or dried. Nineteenth-century tablespoons were often somewhat larger than the modern 15 ml, so the sugar and marmalade should be treated as approximate.
- Boiling the mouldButter a 1.2-litre (2-pint) pudding basin, fill no more than two-thirds, and cover with pleated baking parchment and foil tied under the rim. Stand it on a trivet or folded cloth in a pan of simmering water reaching halfway up, and keep it at a bare simmer, topping up with boiling water so it never runs dry.
- Three hoursThat timing is honest for a pudding of this size and gives the suet time to melt out and leave the crumb light. A shorter boil produces a heavy, greasy centre. Steaming in a covered pan is the same operation and is easier to manage.
- MarmaladeUse a bitter Seville marmalade rather than a sweet breakfast one; the recipe carries very little sugar of its own and relies on the preserve for both sweetness and edge.
- Wine sauceThe period sauce was generally butter and sugar warmed with sherry or Madeira, sometimes thickened or enriched with egg. The recipe does not say whether it was poured over or served separately.
- Turning out and yieldRest the basin five minutes before inverting, or the pudding tears. Six portions, as stated, and it reheats well by steaming for half an hour.
- Cost note1s. 6d. is the compiler's estimate of ingredient cost in Victorian money; it has no modern equivalent worth calculating.
Boiled and steamed suet puddings were a mainstay of nineteenth-century English domestic cookery, cooking over the same fire as everything else and needing no oven. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, first issued in the 1870s and reprinted in various editions for decades afterwards, characteristically gives several versions of a dish under one heading, hence the "another way" — the alphabetical dictionary format let a cook compare a plainer and a richer treatment side by side. Orange marmalade was a familiar store-cupboard preserve by this date, and Seville oranges were a winter fruit. The name "amber" is usually taken to refer to the colour, though the recipe itself does not say so; an earlier tradition of eighteenth-century "amber" puddings also existed.