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Greengage Pudding
Line a buttered mould with good suet crust. Fill it with greengages, picked and washed; add a little moist sugar, put a lid of the crust on the top, and fasten the edges securely; tie the pudding in a floured cloth, put it into boiling water, and boil till done enough. As soon as the pudding is turned out of the basin, cut a hole in the top, to allow the steam to escape. Serve with sweet sauce. Time, two to two and a half hours, according to size. Sufficient, a pudding made in a quart mould for half a dozen persons. Probable cost of greengages, 6d. per quart when in full season.
A boiled suet pudding of the plainest Victorian kind: raw fruit sealed in crust and cooked in water for two hours. The technique survives, but the vessel and the crust need translating.
- Suet crust proportionsThe book assumes you know it: 8 oz self-raising flour (or plain flour with 2 tsp baking powder) to 4 oz shredded suet, a pinch of salt, and cold water to a soft but not sticky dough. Beef suet gives the traditional texture; vegetable suet works and is widely available.
- Mould, basin, quart"Mould" and "basin" are used interchangeably here and mean a pudding basin, not a decorative jelly mould. An imperial quart is 40 fl oz, about 1.14 litres, so a standard 1-litre basin is close enough.
- The floured clothThe cloth is scalded, floured on the inside face, and tied tightly under the basin rim with string, with the corners knotted over the top as a handle. A pleated sheet of baking parchment under foil, tied the same way, does the same job and is far easier to lift out.
- Water levelLower into water already at a rolling boil, coming about two thirds up the basin, and keep it at a steady boil with the lid on. Top up from a boiling kettle; a pause in the boil gives a heavy, greyish crust.
- GreengagesSmall green-gold plums, in season late August into September, sold loose at greengrocers and farmers' markets and only occasionally in supermarkets. Halve and stone them; "picked and washed" in the original means sorted over for bad fruit. Any firm plum or damson substitutes, though gages are less watery.
- Moist sugarMoist sugar is unrefined soft brown sugar. "A little" is vague because gages vary; 3 to 4 tablespoons suits a quart pudding, more if the fruit is underripe. Do not add liquid, as the fruit releases plenty.
- Timing and the steam holeTwo hours for a 1-litre basin, two and a half for larger. Cutting the vent as soon as it is turned out is the one step not to skip: trapped steam and boiling fruit juice will otherwise split the pudding as it settles, and the escaping steam is scalding.
- Sweet sauce and yieldA simple custard, or a cornflour- or arrowroot-thickened sauce sweetened and flavoured with lemon, is one of several sauces a period cook might have used; pouring cream is a fair modern stand-in. Serves six as written.
Greengages are a group of green-skinned dessert plums generally traced in Britain to the Gage family of Suffolk, who are said to have introduced the French Reine Claude in the eighteenth century, the label on the imported trees having been lost. The book treats boiled suet puddings as a whole family of dishes with one master method and interchangeable fillings, which is why the crust quantities are left to the cook and only the fruit and the sugar are described. The costing at the end -- sixpence a quart for gages in full season -- is a reminder that these books were bought for budgeting as much as for cooking, and that fruit puddings were seasonal by necessity rather than choice.