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Christmas Pudding, Teetotaler's, Small
Take one pound of finely-grated bread-crumbs, pour over them a cupful of new milk, and let them soak until the milk is quite absorbed, then add a quarter of a pound of moist sugar, half a pound of finely-shredded beef suet, half a pound of muscatel raisins, a quarter of a nutmeg grated, and half of the thin rind of a lemon chopped small. Mix all well together, then add four well-beaten eggs, and boil at least five hours. Serve with good melted butter, mix with a little sugar, and, if liked, the juice of a lemon. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A plain boiled pudding built on breadcrumbs rather than flour, and deliberately free of the brandy and stout that carry most Victorian Christmas puddings. A few of its terms have shifted meaning.
- "Melted butter" is a sauceIn Victorian usage melted butter means a thickened white sauce — butter, a little flour and water or milk cooked together to the consistency of thin cream — not simply butter liquefied in a pan. Sweetened and sharpened with lemon juice, that is what is meant here.
- Moist sugarMoist sugar is unrefined soft sugar; light brown soft sugar is the closest modern equivalent. It contributes colour as well as sweetness, which matters in a pudding with no dark spirits or treacle in it.
- New milkSimply fresh whole milk, as opposed to skimmed or the previous day's. Whole milk works exactly as intended.
- Muscatel raisinsLarge sun-dried muscat grapes, sold in the period on the stalk and with seeds still in. Modern seedless muscatel or jumbo raisins need no preparation; ordinary raisins will do, though the flavour is less perfumed.
- SuetHalf a pound of shredded beef suet is what binds and enriches this pudding. Packet shredded suet, beef or vegetable, is the practical substitute; if using suet from a butcher, chill it hard and grate it, discarding membrane.
- The boilingFive hours means a covered basin or a floured pudding cloth in gently simmering water, topped up from a kettle so the water never falls below the level of the pudding. Breadcrumb puddings set softer than flour ones and will collapse if turned out too soon; give it ten minutes to settle.
- Quarter of a nutmegRoughly half a teaspoon grated. With no spirits, no mixed spice and no candied peel, the nutmeg and lemon rind are doing all the aromatic work — do not reduce them.
- Yield and keepingThe book says four or five persons, which is about right for a pudding of this size. Unlike a brandy-laden pudding it has no preservative alcohol, so it is not one to store for months; make it close to the day and reheat by steaming.
Cassell's carried "teetotaler's" versions of standard dishes, and they reflect the Victorian temperance movement, which by the 1870s and 1880s had a large working- and lower-middle-class following in Britain. Many Christmas puddings of the period included brandy, rum or stout and were flamed with spirit at the moment of serving, so a household that had signed the pledge needed a formula that produced a rich boiled result without them. This one leans on breadcrumbs and suet for body and on muscatels, nutmeg and lemon rind for flavour. The recipe's stated cost of 1s 4d may point to thrift as well as abstinence; the two frequently travelled together in temperance literature, where drink was blamed for household poverty.