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Mansfield Pudding
Chop three ounces of suet; add to it one table-spoonful of flour, four table-spoonfuls of currants, a pinch of nutmeg, two ounces of moist sugar, the soft part of a French roll, which has been previously soaked in half a pint of boiling cream or milk, and well beaten, a table-spoonful of brandy, a table-spoonful of cream, and two eggs. Beat the pudding with a fork for four or five minutes, and put it into a buttered dish, or into a china mould, if preferred. Time to bake in a moderate oven, three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A baked bread-and-suet pudding of the plainer sort, closer to a rich bread pudding than to a boiled Christmas pudding. The whole thing hangs on getting the roll thoroughly broken down into the hot cream before anything else goes in.
- The hinge: beat the soaked bread smoothPour the boiling cream over the crumb, cover, and leave it 15-20 minutes before working it with a fork or spoon until no lumps remain. Lumps of dry crumb will not soften during baking and give a curdy, uneven pudding.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven is usually taken as about 350F (180C). Three-quarters of an hour at that heat suits a shallow buttered dish of about 1 quart; a deep china mould will want longer and should be tested with a skewer for a clean centre.
- Half a pintIn an English book of this period that is 10 fl oz, so about 1 1/4 US cups. Whole milk works as well as cream and gives a lighter result.
- SuetThree ounces of beef suet, shredded fine. Packaged shredded suet or fresh suet from a butcher both work here; grated frozen butter is a common substitute, though it melts sooner and gives a less flaky result. Keep the fat cold.
- Moist sugarVictorian shorthand for unrefined, slightly damp brown sugar. Light brown sugar, lightly packed, is the closest match; two ounces is a generous quarter cup.
- A French rollAn enriched white breakfast roll rather than a baguette. Use the crumb of a soft white roll or two thick slices of white sandwich bread with the crusts off, roughly 2 oz.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Four tablespoons is about 1 1/2 oz; rinse and dry them if they are dusty, and they need no soaking given the wet batter.
- Serving and yieldThree or four portions, as stated. Serve warm from the dish with cream, a brandy sauce, or a spoonful of jam; turned out of a mould it is fragile and wants ten minutes to settle first.
- Probable costTenpence in pre-decimal money. Costings of this kind are given throughout the book.
Baked puddings built on soaked bread, suet, dried fruit and eggs were common in English cookery of the second half of the nineteenth century: cheaper than a rich boiled pudding, quicker, and made from what was already in the house, a stale roll included. Named puddings of this kind proliferated in Victorian cookery books, and the names often gesture at a place or a patron rather than recording an origin; whether Mansfield here means the Nottinghamshire town is not established, and no source ties the recipe to it. Cassell's dictionaries of cookery were large alphabetical compendia that gave a costing for each recipe, which is why a dish this modest arrives with a price and a serving count attached. The brandy and the spoonful of cream at the end lift a plain pudding a little above the nursery.