Home › The Principles of Cookery › Cherry Pudding, Boiled
Cherry Pudding, Boiled
Make some good suet crust, line a plain, round buttered basin with it, leaving a little over the rim; fill it with cherries, washed and picked, add a little sugar and some finely-chopped lemon-rind, wet the edges of the paste, lay a cover over the pudding, and press the edges closely round. Tie a floured cloth over the pudding, and plunge it into a saucepan of boiling water, which must be kept boiling, or the pudding will become heavy. Before turning it out, dip the basin into cold water for a moment. Serve with sifted sugar. A small pudding will require about two hours to boil. If the cherries are not fully ripe, a longer time must be allowed. Probable cost of cherries, 3d. to 6d. per pound. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A classic English boiled suet pudding, and the technique matters more than the filling: the water must never stop boiling, or the crust absorbs it and turns dense and greasy.
- Keep it at a rolling boilThe hinge of the recipe. A suet crust rises on steam trapped by rapid, continuous boiling; if the pan drops off the boil the fat melts out before the flour sets and the pudding goes heavy. Keep a kettle of boiling water alongside and top up from that, never from the cold tap.
- Suet crust proportionsThe book assumes you know them: roughly 8 oz self-raising flour (or plain flour with 2 tsp baking powder) to 4 oz shredded suet, a pinch of salt, and about 5 fl oz cold water to a soft, rollable dough. Vegetable suet behaves the same way. Roll it about a quarter-inch thick, and reserve a third for the lid.
- The basin'Sufficient for four or five persons' suggests something in the region of a 1.5-pint (about 850 ml) pudding basin, though the book gives no size. Butter it well and line it with the pastry so there are no gaps at the seams.
- Covering itA floured cloth tied over the rim is authentic but fiddly. A pleated round of baking parchment topped with pleated foil, tied under the rim with string and a string handle across the top, does the same job and keeps water out. The pleat gives the pudding room to rise.
- Water levelNot stated in the original beyond 'plunge it into a saucepan of boiling water', which implies generous immersion. Stand the basin on a trivet, upturned saucer or folded cloth in the pan and bring boiling water well up the sides. Lid on.
- StonesThe recipe says only 'washed and picked' and does not say whether to stone the cherries. Modern eaters do not expect stones; pit them, and add a spoonful of cornflour with the sugar, since pitted fruit gives up more juice.
- TimingThe book gives about two hours for a small pudding, and the advice about underripe fruit still holds. A little extra time is unlikely to hurt it as long as the water holds out.
- Turning outThe cold-water dip is intended to loosen the crust from the basin. Let the pudding stand a few minutes, then invert onto a warm dish and serve at once, with sifted sugar and cream or custard.
- The cost note3d. to 6d. per pound is pre-decimal British currency and tells you only that cherries were a cheap summer glut. Ignore it as a shopping guide.
Boiled puddings in a basin or cloth are the great English contribution to the pudding repertoire, made practical by the pudding cloth, which spread through English kitchens in the seventeenth century and freed cooks from having to boil a pudding inside an animal's gut. Suet crust — flour bound with hard beef fat rather than butter — was the everyday casing: cheap, forgiving, and it steams rather than bakes, so a household with one pot over the fire could still produce a substantial sweet course. Cherries at threepence a pound mark it as a midsummer dish, made when the glut was on. The lemon rind is a common Victorian seasoning for cooked fruit.