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Madonna Pudding
Put three-quarters of a pound of bread-crumbs into a basin with eight ounces of finely-shredded suet, and the same weight of good powdered sugar. Beat up two eggs with a large table-spoonful of brandy, add these, with the grated rind of a large lemon, to the ingredients in the basin. Beat the mixture until it is smooth, with a wooden spoon. If labour be not spared in this respect, the pudding will be a success. Fill a buttered mould, tie a floured cloth over, plunge into boiling water, and boil four hours. Probable cost, about 1s. 2d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A plain boiled suet pudding of the breadcrumb type, with no flour and almost no liquid beyond two eggs and a spoonful of brandy. The instruction to beat it thoroughly is not filler — it is the whole method.
- The hinge: beat it properlyWith no flour to build structure, the texture depends entirely on working the suet and crumbs into a cohesive, slightly sticky paste. Five to ten minutes with a wooden spoon, or a stand mixer on low with the paddle, gets you there; an underworked mixture boils into a crumbly, greasy mass.
- Weights in cupsThree-quarters of a pound of breadcrumbs is roughly 6 cups of fresh soft crumbs (not dried); 8 oz shredded suet is about 1⅔ cups; 8 oz powdered (i.e. caster or superfine) sugar is about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons. Weigh if you can — crumb volume varies enormously.
- SuetBeef suet, finely shredded, is the raw hard fat from around the kidneys; ask a butcher, or use packaged shredded suet where sold. Frozen suet grates cleanly on a box grater. Vegetarian shredded suet works but gives a slightly softer set.
- "Powdered sugar" is not confectioners' sugarIn this period it means loaf sugar crushed and sifted fine — the equivalent of caster or superfine granulated. Modern powdered sugar contains cornstarch and will make the pudding pasty.
- The mixture is very dryTwo eggs and a spoonful of brandy is little moisture for about 1¾ lb of dry ingredients. Soft fresh crumbs from a moist loaf go further; with drier bread, add milk a tablespoon at a time until the mixture just holds together when pressed.
- Mould and clothButter a 1½-quart pudding basin generously and fill it no more than three-quarters, as the pudding swells. A floured cloth was the standard cover — the flour paste it forms seals against water. Buttered parchment with a pleat, under foil, tied with string and given a loop handle, does the same job more reliably.
- BoilingStand the basin on a trivet or folded cloth in a deep pan, pour in boiling water to two-thirds up the sides, cover, and keep at a bare simmer. Top up with boiling water every 45 minutes; letting the pan run dry cracks the basin and scorches the pudding. Four hours suits a pudding this dense; test with a skewer, which should come out clean and hot.
- ServingRest 10 minutes before turning out, then serve hot with a sweet sauce — brandy or lemon sauce, or plain custard. It feeds four or five as the book says, and reheats well steamed for 30 minutes.
- The price"1s. 2d." is one shilling and twopence, the book's estimate of what the ingredients would cost.
Boiled suet puddings in a cloth or basin were a mainstay of English domestic cookery from at least the seventeenth century, and the breadcrumb version — crumbs standing in for flour — was a thrifty way to use up a stale loaf while producing something that read as a proper pudding at table. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery catalogues many of these, distinguished less by method than by name and small flourishes: a spoonful of brandy here, lemon rind there. The name "Madonna Pudding" has no documented origin; Victorian cookery writers freely attached decorative, devotional or aristocratic names to near-identical mixtures, and it is best read as a label rather than a clue to any Italian or ecclesiastical ancestry.