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CHRISTMAS PLUM PUDDING (for children)
Shred finely three-quarters of a pound of beef suet, and add to it a pinch of salt, one pound and a half of bread-crumbs, half a pound of flour, three-quarters of a pound of muscatel raisins (these can be purchased loose, not in bunches; they are then almost as cheap as the ordinary pudding-raisins, and the flavour is very superior), three-quarters of a pound of currants, picked and dried, two ounces of candied lemon and citron together, and half a large nutmeg. Mix these thoroughly, then add four eggs and milk enough to moisten it, but not too much, or the pudding will be heavy. Tie it in a pudding-cloth well floured, and boil for five or six hours. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for eight or ten children.
A plain boiled pudding aimed at children, which in this book means no brandy, no sugar beyond the fruit, and nutmeg as the only spice. The main adjustments are the fruit and the cloth.
- Weights and yieldThe dry ingredients alone come to about 4 lb 6 oz, so the full mixture is nearer 5 lb once eggs and milk go in. The book gives the yield only as eight to ten children. It halves cleanly if you want a single pudding of manageable size.
- Beef suetFresh caul or kidney suet from a butcher must be stripped of membrane and shredded very fine, or grated frozen. Packaged shredded suet (beef or vegetarian) works directly and is the practical substitute; use the same weight, 12 oz.
- Muscatel raisinsThese are large seeded raisins sold on the stem in the period, hence the note about buying them loose. Modern seedless muscatels or good Lexia raisins give the same flavour; if you use the stemmed kind, pull the seeds out first.
- "Currants, picked and dried"Dried currants once arrived gritty with stalks and sand, so they were sorted and dried by the fire. Current packets need only a quick rinse and a thorough pat dry — wet fruit makes the crumb sodden.
- Candied lemon and citronTwo ounces total, chopped small. Whole candied citron is now specialist; mixed candied peel is the ordinary supermarket stand-in, though citron is milder and less bitter than orange peel.
- Breadcrumbs, not flourA pound and a half of crumbs to half a pound of flour makes this a bread pudding rather than a cake, and it wants soft white crumbs from a day-old loaf, not dried packet crumbs, which absorb far more liquid.
- The hinge: how wet to make itAdd milk a little at a time until the mixture just drops heavily from the spoon. The warning about heaviness is the real instruction here — a slack mixture in a cloth turns dense and greyish rather than light.
- Cloth versus basinTo boil in a cloth, scald it, wring it, flour the inside generously, tie it loosely to allow swelling, and keep the pot at a steady simmer, topping up with boiling water so the pudding is never uncovered. Greased basins, pleated paper and foil, steamed, are easier and give a neater shape for the same time — but the full quantity needs several pints of capacity, or splitting between two basins.
- Time and donenessFive to six hours at a bare simmer is correct for this size; the pudding is done when a skewer comes out clean and hot. Halved quantities need about three and a half hours.
- CostTwo shillings was roughly comparable to what a charwoman might earn for a day's work in this period, which suggests a treat rather than a weeknight pudding.
Cassell's separates a children's plum pudding from the household one, and the differences are the point: nutmeg alone instead of the usual mixed spice and mace. "Plum" is the older English word for dried fruit generally — raisins and currants — and survived in pudding names long after fresh plums had nothing to do with it. The suet-and-crumb boiled pudding descends from the earlier plum pottage, a spiced meat broth thickened with dried fruit and bread, which stiffened over the eighteenth century into something that could be boiled in a cloth; the sphere shape modern readers associate with Christmas puddings is a product of that cloth. The author's aside about buying muscatels loose rather than on the bunch is the kind of costing note that fills late-Victorian household manuals, written for a cook working to a fixed weekly sum and expected to account for every shilling.