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COTTAGE PLUM PUDDING (another way)
Mix thoroughly one pint of flour, half a pint of sugar, a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, two tea-spoonfuls of cream of tartar, one teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda, two ounces of currants, and two ounces of stoned raisins. Work the ingredients into a light paste with two well-beaten eggs and half a pint of milk. Pour the pudding into a well-buttered mould, and bake it in a brisk oven. This pudding may be eaten cold as plain cake. Time to bake, about three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 9d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A baked, chemically raised pudding rather than a steamed one, and much closer to a plain fruit cake than to a Christmas pudding. The measurements are imperial and largely by volume, so read them carefully before shopping.
- Imperial pintsCassell's is British: a pint is 20 fl oz, not 16. Half a pint of milk is 1¼ US cups; half a pint of sugar is about 1¼ cups, or roughly 9 oz by weight.
- Flour by volumeA pint here is the imperial pint, so a pint of flour, scooped and levelled, is roughly 10–11 oz / 300 g of plain flour. Weigh it if you can — the batter is stiff enough that an extra ounce or two shows.
- Cream of tartar and sodaThis is homemade baking powder, mixed in the bowl. Two teaspoons cream of tartar with one of bicarbonate is equivalent to roughly four teaspoons of modern double-acting baking powder, which is generous. Because it reacts on contact with the milk, get the pudding into the mould and the oven without delay.
- "Brisk oven"The book gives no temperature; 'brisk' is generally reckoned somewhere around 400–425F (200–220C). At that heat a deep mould will darken outside before the centre sets in three-quarters of an hour, so 375F (190C) suits the stated time better, with a skewer test at 40 minutes.
- The mouldA Victorian pudding mould here means a plain metal or china basin, not the baked-dish sense of "casserole". A 2-pint (about 1 litre) pudding basin, a 6-inch cake tin or a small loaf tin all work; butter it thoroughly and, if using china, expect the longer end of the timing.
- Stoned raisins"Stoned" simply means the seeds have been picked out by hand — ordinary seedless raisins do the job. Four ounces of dried fruit in total is a light hand, and the book itself says it may be eaten cold as plain cake.
- ButterRubbing the cold butter into the flour and sugar to a fine crumb before the eggs and milk go in is the likeliest reading of "mix thoroughly" followed by "work into a light paste"; it does not appear to be a creaming instruction.
- YieldFour or five portions, as the recipe states.
"Plum pudding" kept the old English use of plum for any dried fruit, so a pudding with currants and raisins and no fresh fruit at all was correctly named. "Cottage" in Victorian cookery books generally signals the cheap version of a grand dish: no suet, no brandy, no hours of steaming in a cloth, and here a probable cost of ninepence for a family pudding. The cream of tartar and bicarbonate of soda mark this as a later nineteenth-century recipe: both were widely sold by grocers and chemists by the middle of the century, and they raise a batter in minutes where an older recipe would have needed yeast or a long boil.