Home › The Principles of Cookery › Fish Pudding, Plain
Fish Pudding, Plain
Line a pudding-basin with ordinary pudding paste; cut a pound of cod, or any other fish liked, into pieces, season with salt, pepper, a very little chopped parsley, and onion, moisten with stock, cover with a crust, and boil in the usual way; add fish sauce to taste. Serve hot. Time, one hour to boil. Sufficient for two persons.
A boiled suet-crust pudding with a fish filling — the same construction as steak and kidney, scaled down to a two-person basin. Most of the work is in the pastry and the basin, not the fish.
- "Fish sauce" is not nam plaIn a British book of this date, fish sauce means a bottled anchovy, oyster or shrimp sauce, or a plain white sauce enriched with anchovy essence. Southeast Asian fish sauce will overwhelm the dish.
- Pudding paste"Ordinary pudding paste" here is almost certainly a suet crust; the book gives no quantities, but a typical proportion is about 8 oz self-raising flour (or plain flour with 2 tsp baking powder) to 4 oz shredded suet, a good pinch of salt, and cold water to a soft dough. Roll to about a quarter of an inch, line a greased basin of about 1 to 1½ pints, and keep a quarter of the dough back for the lid.
- Boil or steam"Boil in the usual way" means covering the basin with a floured pudding cloth or pleated greaseproof and foil, tying it under the rim, and standing it in a pan of boiling water that comes well up the side, topped up with boiling water as it falls. Steaming in a covered pan or steamer is easier to control, though it may need a little longer.
- The hour is for the crustAn hour is at the short end for suet pastry, and the fish sets the ceiling. Cut the cod into good-sized pieces so it does not disintegrate, and expect the fish to be cooked well before the crust is done.
- Stock, sparingly"Moisten" means only a few tablespoons of stock. Fish releases a good deal of liquid inside a sealed crust, and too much moisture at the start can leave the base sodden.
- Fish choiceA pound of skinned, boned cod, haddock or pollock loin works; check carefully for pin bones, since nothing can be picked out once the lid is on. Avoid oily fish such as mackerel, which turns strong under a lid for an hour.
- Turning outLet the pudding stand five minutes off the heat before loosening the edge and inverting onto a warmed dish. Serve the sauce separately in a boat rather than over the crust.
- YieldTwo persons, as the recipe states — a substantial serving with only a green vegetable or potatoes alongside.
Boiled puddings lined with suet crust were a workhorse of the nineteenth-century English kitchen: a single basin over a single pot could cook a whole main course, which mattered in households with one fire and limited oven access. This sits among the plain, instructional entries — "plain" in Victorian cookbook usage generally signals no cream, no forcemeat, no garnish, a dish for family rather than company. Fish in a suet pudding looks unusual now, but it made sense in a period when fresh sea fish reached inland towns cheaply by rail and Friday and Lenten meals still shaped many domestic menus. The reliance on a bottled "fish sauce" to finish is equally of its time: anchovy essence, Harvey's sauce and their relations were pantry staples used much as we now use a stock cube or a dash of soy.