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Irish Black Pudding
This pudding is excellent cut into thick slices when cold, and broiled over a clear fire, or warmed in an oven. If so served up it should only be boiled an hour, but will require longer time if eaten hot. To a pound of good beef suet, chopped very fine, half a pound of breadcrumbs, and the same of well-washed currants, add four ounces of pounded sweet almonds, a tea-spoonful of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, in powder, some candied peel, and enough loaf sugar to sweeten. Separate the yolks from the whites of four eggs, beat the yolks, and moisten the above ingredients with them stirred into the mixture with a pint of cream and a glass of brandy. Lastly, put in the frothed whites of two eggs and boil in a cloth. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A boiled suet pudding of the plum-pudding family, despite the name. Two things decide whether it works: how tightly the cloth is tied, and how long you boil it for the way you intend to serve it.
- Boil time depends on how you will serve itOne hour gives a pudding firm enough to cool, slice thick and broil or reheat, which is what the recipe recommends. To eat it hot straight from the cloth it needs considerably longer; the recipe does not say how much, but undercooked it will be loose in the middle.
- The pudding clothScald a square of unbleached cotton or linen, wring it out, flour the inside face generously, heap the mixture in the centre and tie it with string leaving room for swelling. It goes into water already at a rolling boil, and the water must be kept at a boil and topped up from a kettle so the pudding is never uncovered. A buttered pudding basin with a floured cloth and foil over the top is the modern equivalent and easier to manage.
- SuetA pound of beef suet is the fat, not shredded packet suet by volume; the boxed shredded suet sold today, weighed to a pound, works and is already fine enough that no chopping is needed. Vegetarian shredded suet behaves much the same in a boiled pudding.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone; use granulated or caster. "Enough to sweeten" is about 4 to 6 oz for this quantity, and 4 oz is plenty given the currants and peel.
- Sweet almondsSweet almonds are ordinary almonds. Ground almonds straight from the packet substitute for four ounces pounded, though pounding blanched almonds yourself gives a coarser, better texture. Bitter almonds, which older books sometimes call for elsewhere, are a different thing and are not wanted here.
- Liquid measuresAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so roughly 2 1/2 US cups of cream. A "glass" of brandy in this period means a wineglass, about 2 fl oz. Add the cream gradually: with a pint of it the batter should be soft and dropping, not pourable, and you may not need it all.
- Candied peelNo quantity is given. Two to three ounces, chopped small, is in keeping with the rest of the fruit.
- The two spare whitesOnly two of the four whites are whipped and folded in at the end. The recipe simply leaves the other two over; use them elsewhere rather than adding them, or the pudding loosens.
- YieldFive or six as written, more if served cold in slices as a broiled savoury-sweet dish, which is really its best use.
The name is misleading to modern eyes: this contains no blood at all, and nothing links it to the blood-and-oatmeal black pudding of an Irish or British breakfast. It is a boiled suet pudding in the plum-pudding line, and the "black" is often said to refer to the colour that currants, candied peel and a heavy hand of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves give the finished thing, though the recipe itself does not say so. What is genuinely distinctive is the serving suggestion, and it is given first: boil it briefly, let it go cold and firm, then cut it into thick slices and broil them over a clear fire. Cold pudding sliced and fried or grilled was, by tradition, a common thrift in a period when a boiled pudding was made large and eaten across several days, and it develops a slightly caramelised crust that some preferred to the pudding hot.