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Mixed Fruit Pudding
Butter a large tin mould, one that will hold a quart, and line it with stale fine bread, first cut into slices of about the fourth of an inch thick, and again with a tin-cutter, into pieces of a triangular form. This form will fit best into the bottom of the mould, but long narrow strips of half an inch broad will be best for the sides. Have ready a syrup made by boiling a pint of currant-juice with a pound and a half of loaf sugar, and, the mould being now prepared, simmer a pint of not over-ripe raspberries with half the quantity of currants, in the syrup for a few minutes, when fill the mould while the fruit is in a boiling but whole state, and set the pudding to cool over ice; or it may be made the day before it is wanted. Time, twenty-five minutes to boil syrup; ten minutes to simmer fruit.
This is an uncooked, cold-set moulded pudding of the summer pudding family, despite the name: nothing goes into the oven and nothing is steamed. The hinge is the bread lining, which must be dry enough to absorb syrup without collapsing.
- The mould and yieldA quart mould is about 1.1 litres and will serve four to six as part of a meal. A pudding basin, loaf tin or straight-sided souffle dish all work; the tin cutter for triangles is decorative rather than necessary, though wedges do fit the base neatly.
- Imperial pintsCassell's pints are imperial: 20 fl oz, or just under 2.5 US cups. That matters for the syrup, where a US pint of juice against 1.5 lb sugar will set noticeably stiffer.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a hard cone and broken up for use. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct replacement, weight for weight, and needs no adjustment.
- Currant juiceRed currants, not dried currants. A pint of juice means roughly 2 lb of fruit crushed and strained, or an equal quantity of unsweetened bottled red currant juice. Cranberry juice is the nearest widely stocked substitute if currants are unavailable, though it is sharper.
- Twenty-five minutes of syrupBoiling a pint of juice with 1.5 lb of sugar that long reduces it substantially and pushes it toward jelly, which is what holds the finished pudding upright. Watch it rather than trust the clock: red currants are high in pectin and a hard boil on a modern hob may reach setting point sooner than the stated timing suggests.
- Ten minutes of fruitTen minutes will break raspberries down entirely. The instruction to fill the mould while the fruit is "boiling but whole" is the real target, so simmer two or three minutes at most, just until the currants slacken and release colour.
- Stale bread is not optionalUse a firm white loaf a day or two old, crusts removed. Fresh soft bread turns to paste under hot syrup and the pudding will not turn out. Pack the lining with no gaps or the filling escapes at those points.
- Setting and turning out"Cool over ice" means chill thoroughly; overnight in the refrigerator, weighted with a saucer and a tin, is better than a few hours. Dip the mould briefly in hot water before inverting, and serve with plain cream.
The technique here — a mould lined with stale bread, filled with hot sweetened fruit and pressed cold — is the same one that produced what British cooks came to call summer pudding, a name often said to have come into general use only relatively late, though printed uses appear from the later nineteenth century. Earlier versions appear under labels like hydropathic pudding, said to have been served at nineteenth-century water-cure establishments where pastry was thought too rich for invalids; Cassell's here simply calls it a mixed fruit pudding. The red currant and raspberry pairing was the obvious one for a British kitchen garden in July, currants supplying the pectin and acidity that raspberries lack, and the whole dish depends on a household habit now largely lost: keeping stale bread as a working ingredient rather than throwing it out.