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Peninsula Pudding
Take six ounces of picked and dried currants, and four ounces of raisins weighed after they have been stoned. Mix with these four ounces of sugar which has been rubbed upon the rind of a small lemon and powdered, and add six ounces of chopped apples, three ounces of finely-shredded suet, three ounces of breadcrumbs, a pinch of salt, and the eighth of a nutmeg, grated. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly, then stir into them three well-beaten eggs, the strained juice of the lemon, and a glassful of brandy. Pour the mixture into a buttered mould which it will fill to the brim, cover with oiled paper, and tie the mould in a floured cloth. Plunge it into boiling water, and keep the pudding boiling until it is done enough. Turn it out carefully, sift powdered sugar thickly over it, and send sweet sauce or wine sauce to table with it. Time to boil, two hours. Probable cost, 1s. 3d., exclusive of the brandy. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A boiled suet pudding of the plum-pudding family, lighter than a Christmas pudding because breadcrumbs stand in for flour and there is fresh apple in the mix. Nothing here is difficult, but the vessel and the water management matter more than the ingredient list.
- The glassful of brandyA "glassful" in Victorian cookery books means a wineglass, roughly 2 fl oz or a scant quarter cup. Anything much more will loosen the mixture and slow the setting.
- Sugar rubbed on the lemonRubbing a lump of sugar over the rind was how cooks extracted the oil before microplanes. Four ounces (about half a cup) of sugar plus the finely grated zest of one lemon does the same job.
- SuetThree ounces of beef suet, finely shredded, is what is meant. Packaged shredded suet, vegetarian suet, or butter frozen and grated on the coarse side of a box grater all work; the point is solid fat in small pieces that melts slowly and leaves the crumb open.
- Weights, not volumesThe proportions here are all by weight and are worth respecting: 6 oz currants, 4 oz stoned raisins, 6 oz chopped apple, 3 oz breadcrumbs, 3 oz suet, 4 oz sugar. Use a scale rather than converting to cups.
- The mould and its coveringA basin of roughly 1.5 to 2 pints; the recipe's own guide is that the mixture should fill the mould to the brim. Oiled paper and a floured cloth translate to a round of buttered parchment topped with foil, pleated across the middle to allow lift, and tied under the rim with string; make a loop of string across the top as a handle.
- Boiling, and the water lineThe original plunges the cloth-tied mould straight into boiling water, effectively submerged. If you cover with parchment and foil instead, set the basin on a trivet or folded cloth in the pan and bring the water two-thirds up its side. Keep it boiling steadily for the full two hours and top up only with boiling water, or the pudding stalls.
- "Until it is done enough"Two hours is right for this size. A skewer into the centre should come out clean and hot; if you use a larger, shallower mould it will be done sooner.
- Turning outLet it stand five minutes off the heat before inverting, then loosen the edge with a knife. A pudding gone straight from boiling water to plate is more likely to slump.
- Sauce and yield"Wine sauce" is a pouring sauce of butter, sugar and sherry or brandy; "sweet sauce" is a looser term covering sweetened melted butter or a thin custard, the easiest modern stand-in. It serves five or six as the original says.
Cassell's, like other late-Victorian dictionaries of cookery, carried a long roster of boiled suet puddings distinguished only by small shifts in fruit, spirit and spice. The book gives no explanation of the name; a nod to the Peninsular War of 1808-14 is a plausible guess but is not documented. Whatever the label, the construction is plum pudding in miniature: dried vine fruit, suet, breadcrumbs and eggs bound with brandy and boiled in a cloth-tied mould, a method that predates reliable domestic ovens and survived long after them because a pot of water is far more forgiving than a coal range. The chopped apple and the lemon juice are what set this one apart, lightening a mixture that would otherwise be dense.