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Black Currant Pudding
Butter a basin and line it with pudding paste. To a pint and a half of fruit mix six ounces of sugar. The currants should be dry or they will make too much juice. Mix the sugar well up with the fruit before it is put into the basin; boil one hour and a half. Or a pudding may be baked in this way. Stew for about a quarter of an hour, in as much milk as will cover it, a tea-cupful of rice made sweet with two ounces of sugar. Take care it does not burn, and when done and nearly cool, stir in an ounce of butter and three well-beaten eggs with three table-spoonfuls of cream. Lay some currants, previously cooked, in a pie-dish, add sugar (they require a good deal), and throw the mixture over them. Bake at once for half an hour; one hour to cook the fruit will be sufficient. May be used hot or cold. Probable cost, 1s. 3d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
Two puddings in one entry: a boiled suet-crust pudding filled with raw sugared currants, and a baked rice custard poured over stewed fruit. Both are straightforward once the Victorian measures and vessels are translated.
- The hinge: dry fruitThe instruction to use dry currants is the one that decides whether the boiled pudding survives. Wet or thawed fruit throws more juice, which can soften the crust from inside and may split it in the water. Pick over and dry the currants thoroughly, and toss them with the sugar before filling so the sugar is not sitting in a wet layer at the bottom.
- Pudding pasteIn Cassell's a paste of this kind is generally a suet crust — something like 8 oz flour to 4 oz shredded suet, a pinch of salt, cold water to a firm dough; the page itself does not specify. Line a buttered basin large enough to take the pint and a half of fruit, keeping back enough paste for a lid, and seal the edges with water.
- Boiling the puddingCover the basin with buttered paper and a pleated sheet of foil or a floured cloth, tied under the rim. Stand it in a pan of simmering water reaching two-thirds up the sides, lid on, and top up with boiling water as it falls. The recipe's hour and a half is the guide.
- Pint and a half of fruitFruit is measured by volume here: a pint and a half imperial is about 30 fl oz, so nearer 3¾ cups of blackcurrants, something over a pound. Six ounces of sugar is roughly ¾–⅞ cup — blackcurrants are sharp and this is not excessive.
- A tea-cupful of riceA Victorian teacup is around 5-6 fl oz, so roughly 5 oz of short-grain pudding rice. Simmer it in milk to cover, stirring, for about 15 minutes; it will still be firm, and finishes cooking in the oven.
- Cool before the eggs"Nearly cool" matters. Stirring three beaten eggs into hot rice scrambles them and the custard will curdle in the oven rather than set.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven heat; a moderate oven, around 350F (180C), suits the rice version. Half an hour seems to assume the currants underneath were stewed first, as the recipe specifies; the alternative hour may be intended for fruit going in raw.
- YieldThe original claims five or six servings, which is fair for the boiled pudding, though no basin size is given. The probable cost of 1s 3d is a period price, not a guide to anything now.
Blackcurrants were a British garden staple rather than a market fruit for most of the nineteenth century — too sour to eat raw, too perishable to travel far, and so cooked, bottled or turned into jelly and cordial close to where they grew. That is why a general dictionary of cookery like Cassell's treats them as a pudding fruit alongside gooseberries and damsons. The boiled basin pudding lined with suet paste is often taken to be the older of the two methods given here, a form that dominated English domestic cooking while the range was a single fire and oven space was scarce; the baked rice-and-custard version is generally associated with the later kitchen and its reliable closed oven, though baked rice puddings themselves are long established. The note on probable cost and number served is characteristic of Cassell's, which was written for households budgeting a week's meals rather than for cooks browsing for inspiration.