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Amber Pudding
Beat half a pound of butter to a cream. Mix with it a quarter of a pound of flour, six table-spoonfuls of bread-crumbs, sugar to taste, the finely-chopped rind of three lemons, a pinch of salt, and three well-beaten eggs. Beat all well together, fill a buttered mould, and boil four hours. Finely-shred suet may be substituted for the butter. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A plain English boiled pudding of the butter-and-crumb type, closer in texture to a rich steamed sponge than to a suet duff. The lemon rind is the whole point, so treat it carefully.
- Zest, not pith"Finely-chopped rind" means the coloured outer layer only; three lemons' worth of pith would make the pudding bitter. A microplane over the bowl catches the oils that give the pudding its scent.
- Sugar to tasteThe original leaves the quantity to the cook. Around 4 oz (½ cup) of caster sugar balances half a pound of butter and three lemons; much more than that and the pudding risks being cloying.
- WeightsHalf a pound of butter is 225 g (2 US sticks), a quarter pound of flour 115 g, and six tablespoons of breadcrumbs roughly 25–30 g of soft white crumbs, depending on how coarsely they are made. Use fresh crumbs, not dried packaged ones, which absorb more moisture.
- "Boil" means steam"Boil" means, in practice, steam or simmer -- set the covered mould in a pan of water and keep it at a bare simmer; some cooks immersed the mould, others stood it in water part-way up the side. A metal or ceramic pudding basin covered with pleated parchment and foil, tied under the rim, in a covered pan gives the same result. Keep a kettle going and top the water up; a pan that boils dry can crack the basin.
- Four hoursThe recipe gives four hours whichever fat is used. In a modern 1½-pint basin the butter version may well be done sooner, in around 2 to 2½ hours; test with a skewer, which should come out clean and dry. Over-steaming will not ruin it, but it dulls the lemon.
- The suet optionShredded beef suet gives a coarser, more traditional pudding and needs the full four hours. Packaged shredded suet, beef or vegetable, works straight from the box; a solid block must be grated with flour to stop it clumping.
- Turning out and servingRest the basin five minutes before inverting, or the pudding slumps. Serves five or six, as stated, with a lemon or wine sauce, or simply cream.
- The cost line1s. 6d. is a Victorian estimate for the ingredients, not a modern guide.
"Amber" puddings turn up in English cookery from what is generally traced to the eighteenth century onward, and the name is usually said to refer to the colour rather than to any particular technique — the yellow of butter, egg yolk and lemon peel cooked together, though this is an inference rather than a documented etymology. Earlier versions were often baked in a pastry case, sometimes with candied orange peel and a good deal more sugar; by the time Cassell's was compiled in the later nineteenth century the dish had settled into the standard boiled-pudding format that dominated British domestic cooking, where a covered basin in a pan of simmering water needed no oven at all. The offer of shredded suet in place of butter may reflect economy as much as taste: suet was the cheaper fat, sold by every butcher as a byproduct.