Home › The Principles of Cookery › Black Cap Pudding
Black Cap Pudding
Make a good batter pudding. Pick and wash a quarter of a pound of currants, lay them at the bottom of a mould previously well buttered; pour the batter in over them and boil two hours. When turned out the currants will be on the top; this forms the black cap. Probable cost of the paste per pint, 7d.
A boiled batter pudding turned out so that the currants, put in first, end up on top as the "black cap." The whole thing hinges on the batter being thick enough to hold the fruit in place.
- The batterThe recipe assumes you know the standard batter pudding: flour, eggs and milk with a pinch of salt, beaten smooth. Proportions vary from book to book, but roughly 4 oz plain flour and 3 to 4 eggs to a pint of milk is a workable starting point. A thin, pancake-like batter will let the currants drift and you get no clean cap; aim for the consistency of thick cream.
- Quarter pound of currantsThat is about 4 oz or 3/4 cup of dried currants — the small black Zante sort, not fresh currants and not raisins. "Pick" means removing stems and grit, unnecessary with modern packaged fruit, but a rinse and thorough drying still helps them grip the buttered mould.
- Butter the mould heavilyUse a 1 1/2 pint pudding basin, greased into every crease, and press the currants into the butter at the bottom so they stay put when the batter goes in. A cold mould holds the butter better than a warm one.
- Boiled means steamedBoiling and steaming -- The original would have had the covered mould boiled in water; steaming is the gentler modern equivalent. Cover the basin with buttered parchment and foil, or a floured cloth tied under the rim, and stand it on a trivet in a pan of simmering water reaching two-thirds up the sides. Top up with boiling water as it evaporates; if the water gets in, the pudding is lost.
- Two hours is rightUnlike many Victorian times, this one need not be cut. Egg-and-milk batter set in a deep mould genuinely takes about two hours at a bare simmer, and it should come out firm enough to unmould cleanly. Test with a skewer to the centre.
- Turning outLet it stand five minutes off the heat before inverting onto a warmed dish, then lift the basin away slowly so the cap comes away with the pudding rather than sticking to the basin.
- Yield and servingServes four to six. It wants a sauce — melted butter beaten with sugar and a spoon of sherry or brandy in the period manner, or simply caster sugar and cream.
- The cost note"7d. per pint" is the price of the batter in old pence, a shopping guide for a Victorian cook rather than anything to act on. Cassell's gave these figures throughout so a housekeeper could judge a dish before committing to it.
Black cap pudding is a plain nursery and family pudding of the sort English cookery books multiplied endlessly in the nineteenth century: batter, milk, eggs, dried fruit, and a pot of water. The name simply describes the result — the currants sink to the bottom of the mould, or rather are placed there, and reappear as a dark cap when the pudding is inverted. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, compiled in the 1870s, files it among the batter puddings because that is what it is: the standard batter, dressed up by one decision about where to put the fruit. The costing in pence is characteristic of the book, which treated economy as a subject on equal footing with flavour.