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FIG PUDDING (another way)
This pudding is often made like a roly-poly jam pudding (see ROLY-POLY JAM PUDDING), thus. Mix three-quarters of a pound of flour and six ounces of finely-chopped suet into a smooth paste with milk. Cut the figs-about one pound-into bits, and put them over the paste, which should be rolled out half an inch thick. When doubled over, see that the paste is firmly closed at the ends, and tie in a floured cloth to boil. Time, nearly two hours. Probable cost, 1s. 3d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A plain Victorian suet roly-poly with dried figs standing in for jam. The method is sound; almost everything that needs translating is a weight, a vessel or the boiling.
- The measurementsThree-quarters of a pound of flour is about 3 cups; six ounces of suet is roughly 1 cup, packed, of the shredded kind. A pound of figs is about 3 cups chopped. Milk is unmeasured on purpose — add it a little at a time until the dough just comes together, around 2/3 to 1 cup.
- SuetShredded beef suet is sold in packets in Britain and can be ordered elsewhere; a butcher will give you raw kidney suet, which needs the membrane stripped and then grating while very cold. Frozen grated butter is the usual substitute, though the crust will be shorter and less springy.
- The figsThese are dried figs, not fresh. Modern dried figs are likely to be softer and moister than the pressed fig cakes of the period; snip off the hard stem ends and cut them small so the roll can be closed cleanly.
- Rolling and sealingThis is the hinge. Leave a clear border of paste all round the filling, damp it, and pinch it hard closed — fruit forced into the seam will open it in the water and you will boil the pudding away into the pot.
- The clothScald the cloth, wring it out, and flour the inside generously; the flour forms the skin that stops the paste sticking. Tie loosely enough for the pudding to swell by about a third. A double layer of pleated parchment and foil in a greased basin, steamed, works as well and is easier to manage.
- BoilingThe water must be at a full boil before the pudding goes in and must not stop boiling, or the crust turns sodden. Top up only with boiling water from a kettle. Nearly two hours is right for a roll this size.
- Yield and servingFive or six, as stated, and it is a substantial pudding. Serve hot, sliced across, with custard, cream or plain golden syrup. The stated cost of 1s 3d suggests an inexpensive dish, though there is nothing here to compare it against.
Fig pudding belongs to the long English line of boiled suet puddings, the same family as the roly-poly and the spotted dick, in which a cheap flour-and-fat paste is made a treat by whatever dried fruit the household can afford. Dried figs reached British kitchens in quantity through the Mediterranean trade, most of them pressed cakes shipped from Smyrna in modern-day Turkey, and by the later nineteenth century they were a grocer's staple cheap enough for everyday use. The pudding's association with Christmas — the "figgy pudding" of the carol — is generally traced to the older West Country habit of calling any raisin or dried-fruit pudding figgy, so the connection is looser than the name suggests. The recipe is headed "another way," which tells you how ordinary the dish was: not a set-piece but a way of using a pound of figs and the suet already in the larder.