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Currant Pudding, Boiled, Black, Red, or White
Line a plain round mould which has been well buttered with a good suet crust (see CRUST, SUET. FOR PUDDINGS). Put in the currants, stripped of their stalks, and allow a quarter of a pound of moist sugar for a quart of currants. Place a cover on the top, make the edges very secure, so that the juice cannot escape, and tie the pudding in a floured cloth. Put it into boiling water. A few raspberries or strawberries are an agreeable addition. Time, two hours and a half to boil. Probable cost of currants, about 4d. per quart. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A boiled suet pudding of raw fruit, cooked entirely by the steam trapped inside the crust. The whole thing depends on the seal: if the lid of pastry leaks, the juice runs out into the water and you are left with a pale, dry pudding.
- The mouldThe recipe does not give a size; for a quart of currants a pudding basin of roughly 1.5 quarts (about 1.7 litres) suits. Butter it heavily and line it with the suet crust rolled fairly thin, leaving enough overhang to join to the lid.
- Sealing the crustBrush the rim of the lining with water, lay on the pastry lid, and pinch the two together firmly all the way round. This is the hinge of the recipe. Any gap and the fruit juice escapes into the boiling water.
- Cloth or coveringThe floured cloth both seals and supports the pudding. A pleated sheet of baking parchment topped with foil, tied under the rim with string and given a loop handle, does the same job and is easier to lift out.
- QuantitiesA quart of currants is roughly 1.25 to 1.5 lb (600-700 g) of stripped fruit. A quarter pound of "moist sugar" is 4 oz (115 g) of soft light brown sugar; blackcurrants are sharper than red or white and take closer to 6 oz.
- Suet crustThe recipe sends you to a separate suet crust entry, not given here. A workable modern equivalent is about 8 oz self-raising flour to 4 oz shredded suet, a pinch of salt and cold water to bind; vegetable suet can be substituted. Handle it lightly and use it at once.
- BoilingLower the basin into water already at a rolling boil, keeping the water level about two-thirds up the side, and top up with boiling water as it drops. If the pan goes off the boil or runs dry the crust turns heavy.
- Time and turning outTwo and a half hours is right for this size. Let it stand five minutes off the heat before inverting, or the hot crust may split under the weight of the fruit.
- ServingEnough for five or six. Serve with pouring cream, custard or a spoonful of the juice; the fruit inside is essentially raw stewed currants and will be very hot.
Boiled puddings in a cloth or basin are the backbone of nineteenth-century English domestic cookery: they need only a pot of water and a fire that is already lit, which is often said to have mattered in kitchens where the oven was reportedly a once-a-week event. Suet crust encasing raw fruit gave rise to a whole family of these puddings, of which summer currant and the better-known blackberry and apple are examples, and Cassell's arranges them alphabetically alongside dozens of near-identical variants. The costing of "about 4d. per quart" points to currants as a cheap, abundant garden and market fruit in Britain at the time. The suggestion of raspberries or strawberries points to the stretching and softening of a sharp fruit with whatever ripened at the same moment.