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Mandarin Pudding
Mix a quarter of a pound of fine bread-crumbs, a quarter of a pound of well-chopped suet, a quarter of a pound of Jamaica preserved green ginger, with two eggs and two table-spoonfuls of the syrup of the ginger. Pour the mixture into a buttered mould or basin, and steam for four hours. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A Victorian steamed pudding of the plainest construction: crumbs, suet, ginger and egg, with no flour and no raising agent. A few notes on the measures and the steaming.
- The quantitiesA quarter of a pound is 4 oz (115 g) of each of the three main ingredients. Four ounces of fine dry breadcrumbs is roughly a cup packed; if you use fresh soft crumbs you will need closer to two cups by volume for the same weight, and the pudding will be lighter.
- SuetPackaged shredded beef suet works directly. Butcher's block suet should be stripped of membrane and grated frozen. Vegetable suet behaves much the same here, since there is no flour to shorten and the fat is doing little more than keeping the crumb open and moist.
- Jamaica preserved green gingerThis is young ginger boiled in sugar syrup and sold in jars of syrup — close to what is now sold as stem ginger in syrup. Chop it fine. Crystallised ginger is not a straight swap: it carries no syrup and is drier and sharper, so if you use it, add extra sugar syrup for the two tablespoonfuls called for.
- Cover the basinThe recipe does not say so, but a steamed pudding must be sealed or condensation will waterlog it. Butter the basin, cover with a pleated round of parchment and foil, and tie under the rim.
- SteamingStand the basin on a trivet or folded cloth in a pan of water reaching halfway up the sides, cover, and keep at a bare simmer. Top up with boiling water — never cold — and do not let the pan run dry.
- Four hours is generousThat timing suits a heavy flour-and-suet pudding. This one is small, eggbound and flourless, and in a basin of about 1 to 1½ pints it may well be set through in appreciably less than the stated four hours. Start testing with a skewer to the centre from around two hours.
- Texture, and what to expectWith no flour and no baking powder the result is dense and close, nearer a bread pudding than a sponge. That is correct for the recipe, not a fault.
- ServingTurn out and serve hot with the remaining ginger syrup thinned into cream, or with a plain egg custard. The recipe gives it as sufficient for five or six; the total mixture is a little over a pound, so those are small portions.
Preserved green ginger was a familiar item in the well-stocked Victorian store cupboard, sold in syrup and treated as a luxury sweetmeat as well as a cooking ingredient. Jamaica was a significant ginger producer for the British market, though preserved ginger in syrup also reached Britain from China. The name "Mandarin" has no evident connection to Chinese cookery; it appears to be a fanciful title attached to a ginger dish. The construction itself is thoroughly English: it is the standard breadcrumb-and-suet steamed pudding, with an expensive imported preserve carried in place of the usual currants or jam. The stated cost of one shilling is high for a suet pudding, and the ginger is the reason.