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Malvern Apple Pudding
To a pound of finely-grated bread-crumbs and an equal weight of good russet apples--peeled, cored, and chopped small--add four ounces of moist sugar, a tea-spoonful of grated lemon-peel, or the rind of half a lemon, minced as small as possible, and four well-beaten eggs. Mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon, and throw in from time to time, while beating the mixture, a pound and a half, or more, of clean dry currants, and a glass of brandy. Boil in a floured cloth, which should be tied quite tight, without any space being left for swelling. Time, four hours to boil. Probable cost. 1s. 6d. Sufficient for two puddings.
A crumb-and-fruit boiled pudding of the old school: no flour, no suet, no raising agent, held together entirely by egg and long boiling. The proportions are large by modern standards, and the original expects you to know how a pudding cloth behaves.
- The hinge: tie it tightBecause there is no flour or baking powder, this batter does not rise and must not be given room to move. A slack cloth lets water in and the pudding turns to sludge; wring the scalded cloth out, flour it well, gather and tie hard against the mixture.
- Moist sugarVictorian "moist sugar" is unrefined soft brown sugar, damp and clumping. Light brown sugar is the closest match; four ounces is about half a cup packed.
- RussetsRusset apples are firm, dry-fleshed and slightly nutty, so they hold their shape rather than dissolving. Any dense cooking apple that does not collapse works better here than a soft dessert variety.
- A glass of brandyThe recipe does not specify what glass; if read as the period wine glass, that is around 2 fluid ounces, about a quarter cup. It is there for flavour rather than as liquid the mixture needs.
- The currantsA pound and a half of dried currants to a pound each of crumbs and apple is a very high fruit ratio, and "or more" pushes it further. The result is dark, dense and closer to a Christmas pudding than a fruit pudding; reduce to a pound if you want the apple to read at all.
- Four hours at a bare simmerKeep the water rolling gently and topped up with boiling water, never off the boil and never at a hard rattle, which knocks the cloth about. A greased basin with pleated parchment and foil can be substituted, but a steamed basin will need at least as long and probably longer.
- Yield and servingThe recipe says only 'sufficient for two puddings' and gives no serving count. Serve hot with brandy butter, a lemon-spiked custard or plain cream; leftovers slice and fry well in butter.
Boiled puddings tied in a floured cloth were the backbone of English domestic cookery from the seventeenth century onward, and they survived into Cassell's day because they needed only a pot of water and a fire, not an oven. This one belongs to the crumb-pudding family, where stale bread does the work that flour and suet do elsewhere — a thrifty use of the loaf in a kitchen where nothing was thrown out. The Malvern name is presumably a nod to the Worcestershire orchard country rather than any documented local original; Victorian cookery books routinely attached place names to standard formulas. The costing in shillings and pence is characteristic of Cassell's, which was written for households working to a budget and expected the cook to know what a pudding ought to cost before she made it.