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Cheltenham Pudding
Shred six ounces of suet very finely, add six ounces of flour, a pinch of salt, and a heaped tea-spoonful of baking powder, two ounces of bread-crumbs, three ounces of raisins, three ounces of currants, two table-spoonfuls of sugar, and half a nutmeg grated. Mix these ingredients well together, and stir into the mixture two well-beaten eggs and sufficient new milk to make it into a stiff smooth batter. Pour it into a buttered dish and bake in a good oven. Turn it out when sufficiently cooked, and serve with brandied sauce. Time to bake, one hour and a half. Sufficient for five or six persons. Probable cost, 10d.
A baked suet pudding of the plain Victorian sort — cheap, filling and forgiving. Only a few of its terms and habits need translating.
- "A good oven"The book gives no temperature. A moderate oven, somewhere around 350F (180C), is a reasonable modern reading for a batter this dense, which needs the full hour and a half to set through without the outside hardening. If the top colours too early, lay foil over it loosely for the last half hour.
- SuetFresh beef suet from a butcher must be stripped of membrane and shredded fine, ideally with a little of the flour to stop it clumping. Packet shredded suet, beef or vegetable, works directly and is the readier substitute.
- New milkSimply fresh whole milk, as opposed to milk that had stood and been skimmed. Whole milk is the equivalent; the recipe gives no quantity, so add it a little at a time until the mixture is a stiff smooth batter.
- Half a nutmegThat is a generous quantity by modern taste — around a teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg. Half that gives a warmth that does not fight the fruit, and grating it fresh matters far more than the amount.
- Currants and raisinsDried currants are the small black Zante grape, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Toss the fruit with a spoonful of the measured flour before mixing so it does not sink to the bottom of the dish.
- The dishButter a deep pie dish or a 1.5-litre baking dish well; the pudding is meant to be turned out whole. Let it stand five to ten minutes out of the oven before inverting, or it will slump.
- Brandied sauceThe recipe does not specify. Most likely a sweet pouring sauce: melted butter, sugar and brandy, or a thin custard flavoured with brandy. Serve it hot over the turned-out pudding.
- YieldFive or six portions as written, and it is rich enough that those portions should be modest. It reheats well, covered, in a low oven.
Suet puddings like this one are the plain backbone of nineteenth-century English cookery: cheap fat, cheap flour, a handful of dried fruit, and cheap feeding for a family. The 10d costing that closes the entry is characteristic of Cassell's, which priced almost every dish so that a household manager could budget a week's meals from the book. Baking such a pudding rather than boiling it in a cloth gave a browned crust and a shape that could be turned out to the table. The name is one of a great many Victorian puddings attached to a fashionable spa or town u2014 Malvern, Cheltenham u2014 a naming habit that often signals gentility rather than any documented local origin, and no particular Cheltenham connection is recorded for this mixture.