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Hunter's Pudding
A hunter's pudding and a plum pudding are very similar. Mix half a pound of finely-shredded beef-suet with a quarter of a pound of bread-crumbs and a quarter of a pound of flour, add half a pound of stoned and chopped raisins, half a pound of picked currants, half a pound of sugar, the grated rind and strained juice of half a lemon, a pinch of salt, half a nutmeg, grated, and an ounce of candied lemon. When the dry ingredients are thoroughly mixed, stir in four well-beaten eggs, and either milk, beer, port wine, or brandy sufficient to make a stiff batter. Put the mixture into a buttered mould, and boil for six or seven hours. This pudding will keep for several months, and when used may be either cut into slices and fried, or plunged again into boiling water and boiled for an hour. Several puddings may be mixed and boiled together, and are very useful for keeping in the house to be used as occasion requires. If finely-minced cooked meat be substituted for the suet, this pudding may be eaten cold. Another excellent hunter's pudding may be made by taking a pound and a half of the mince made for mince pies, mixing it with six ounces of finely-grated bread-crumbs and three eggs. Probable cost, 1s. 3d., exclusive of the wine, etc. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A boiled suet pudding of the plum-pudding family, built to be made in quantity and kept. Nothing here is difficult, but the method assumes a covered mould, a large pot and an afternoon of unattended simmering.
- The hinge: keep the water boiling and topped upThe mould must stay surrounded by simmering water for the whole six to seven hours. If the level drops below the pudding it scorches and the batter sets unevenly, so keep a kettle going and add boiling — never cold — water.
- Mould and coveringButter a lidded mould or pudding basin big enough to take the whole mixture with room to spare (this quantity is well over two pints once mixed), fill it no more than three-quarters full, and cover with pleated greaseproof paper and foil tied under the rim, or a floured cloth in the older manner. Stand it on a trivet or folded cloth so it does not sit on the pot's base.
- Steaming instead of boilingA covered steamer over gently boiling water gives much the same result and less risk of water getting into the pudding. Reckon the same six to seven hours.
- Suet"Finely-shredded beef-suet" means fresh suet from the kidney, grated or chopped. Packet shredded suet, beef or vegetarian, works directly; use the same 8 oz.
- Half a nutmegHalf a whole nutmeg grated is roughly a rounded teaspoon — assertive by current taste. Start with half that if you want the fruit and lemon forward.
- Candied lemonAn ounce of candied lemon peel, chopped, not mixed peel or a strip of glacé fruit. The grated rind is separate and both are meant to be present.
- The liquid is by feelMilk, beer, port or brandy "sufficient to make a stiff batter" is likely to be 4 to 6 fl oz depending on how dry the crumbs are. The mixture should drop reluctantly from the spoon, not pour.
- The keeping instructionA boiled suet pudding, kept sealed and cool, does hold for weeks, but do not follow the "several months" advice at room temperature in a heated house. Wrap and refrigerate, or freeze; reheat by boiling an hour, or slice and fry as the book suggests.
- The minced-meat variationThe version with cooked minced meat in place of suet is not a keeper, whatever the original implies, and should be treated as a cooked meat dish: refrigerated and eaten within a couple of days.
- YieldFive or six portions as stated, served hot with brandy butter, hard sauce or cream. The "probable cost, 1s. 3d." is a period price, not a modern one.
Hunter's pudding sits in a long English line of boiled suet-and-fruit puddings that ran from the seventeenth-century pudding boiled in a cloth to the Christmas plum pudding, and the entry opens by admitting the two are near-identical. The name is often said to point at the practical virtue the entry dwells on: a dense, sugar- and fat-rich pudding survives storage, travels, and can be sliced and fried at short notice — supposedly useful for a hunting household where men came in cold and hungry at unpredictable hours, though the recipe itself says nothing of hunters beyond the title, and equally useful, as the text says, "for keeping in the house to be used as occasion requires." The suggestion of milk, beer, port or brandy as the moistening liquid is a reminder that these puddings were adjusted to what the larder held rather than to a fixed formula, and the final variant made from leftover mincemeat shows the same thrift working in the other direction, turning the surplus of one baking into the substance of another.