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Ingoldsby Christmas Pudding
Take of stoned raisins, well-washed currants, and finely-shredded suet, each one pound; of flour and stale grated bread-crumbs, mixed, one pound; and one pound of sifted sugar. Put these ingredients into a large bowl with a quarter of an ounce each of candied peel, cut into bits, and mixed spice, the grated rind of a lemon, and a small nutmeg. Moisten with eight eggs, strained and well beaten, and two glasses of brandy or rum. This quantity suffices for two good-sized puddings, enough for six persons. Time, six hours and a half for the whole quantity, four hours for half. Probable cost, 3s. 4d., exclusive of the brandy.
A classic English boiled pudding in the old proportions -- equal weights of fruit, suet, sugar and dry goods -- and it behaves exactly as those proportions suggest: dense, dark and long-keeping. Two points need attention before you start: the peel quantity, and the length of the steam.
- The peel measure is almost certainly a misprintThe peel measure looks low -- a quarter of an ounce of candied peel in a mixture this size is barely detectable, and a quarter of a pound would be a more usual Victorian proportion, though it is possible the printed text is as intended. A quarter-ounce of mixed spice, by contrast, is about right -- roughly three teaspoons.
- Total weight and divisionThe whole quantity comes to about 6 lb of raw mixture, which the book splits into two puddings. Each fills a 1.5-litre (2½-pint) basin generously. Six persons is a Victorian estimate for both puddings together; each one realistically serves eight to ten.
- Boiled, not bakedNo oven is mentioned because none was intended. Fill a greased basin, cover with pleated parchment and foil or a floured cloth tied under the rim, and stand it on a trivet in a pan of simmering water reaching halfway up. Keep a kettle going and top up -- if the pan boils dry the pudding scorches and the basin can crack.
- Six and a half hours means itThe long steam is what turns raw suet and flour into that translucent, close-textured crumb. Four hours for a single pudding, as stated, is the minimum. This is one of the few timings in Victorian cookery that modern practice has not shortened.
- SuetShredded beef suet is meant -- fresh kidney suet grated on the coarse side of a box grater, or the packaged shredded kind. Frozen butter grated coarsely will work but gives a shorter, cakier crumb; vegetable suet is the closest direct substitute.
- Mixed spiceA British blend, not allspice alone: cinnamon, coriander, nutmeg, ginger, cloves. The additional whole nutmeg grated in on top is deliberate and not a duplication.
- "Two glasses" of spiritA wine glass of the period is around 2 fl oz, so about ½ cup of brandy or rum in total for both puddings. That is a modest amount for a mixture this size and is not enough to preserve the pudding on its own -- the long cooking and the sugar do that work.
- Keeping and reheatingCool completely, re-cover with fresh parchment, and store somewhere cool and dark; a month improves it. Steam for a further hour and a half to two hours before serving.
- Cost3s. 4d. was a real sum, a day's wage or more for many working men in the 1870s, which is why a pudding like this belonged to Christmas and not to Tuesday.
The name is a literary borrowing. The Ingoldsby Legends, a wildly popular collection of comic and gothic verse tales published from 1837 by Richard Harris Barham under the pen name Thomas Ingoldsby, gave Victorian cooks and confectioners a byword for old-fashioned English jollity, and dishes were christened after it much as others were named for Soyer or Victoria. Cassell's dictionary, generally dated to the 1870s, catalogues a number of such Christmas puddings side by side -- rich, plain, economical, and named -- because the boiled plum pudding by then had become the fixed centre of the English Christmas dinner, a position it had held only since the middle of the century. The recipe's structure is older than its name: equal pounds of fruit, suet, sugar and flour-and-crumbs is one common eighteenth-century plum pudding formula among many that varied considerably, particularly in sugar, and it is conventionally said to descend from the spiced, thickened meat broths called plum pottage that the pudding cloth gradually turned into something solid enough to carry to the table.