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Plum Pudding, Economical
Shred a quarter of a pound of beef suet very finely; mix with it three-quarters of a pound of flour, three-quarters of a pound of flour, three-quarters of a pound of bread-crumbs, half a pound of raisins stoned and chopped, half a pound of currants, half a pound of moist sugar, the peel of a lemon finely shredded, and half a nutmeg, grated. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly, and stir in with them six well-beaten eggs and as much milk as is required to make a stiff paste. Put the pudding into a floured cloth, and tie it up, not too tightly, but leaving room for it to swell. Put it into a pan of boiling water, and keep it boiling quickly for five hours. Do not turn it out of the cloth until just before it is to be served. Send sweet sauce to table in a tureen. If preferred, three eggs only may be used, and three heaped tea-spoonfuls of baking-powder. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A boiled suet pudding of the plainest sort — no brandy, no candied peel, no long maturing — and the ingredient list is nearly all weight, so it scales cleanly. Two things need sorting before you start: a printing error and the cloth.
- The duplicated line"three-quarters of a pound of flour" appears twice, one line above the breadcrumbs. This looks like a typesetting slip; the intended proportions are most likely 12 oz flour and 12 oz breadcrumbs.
- Weights in grams4 oz suet (115 g), 12 oz flour (340 g), 12 oz breadcrumbs (340 g), 8 oz each raisins, currants and sugar (225 g each). Breadcrumbs should be dry-ish white crumbs, not fresh soft ones, or the pudding sits heavy.
- Moist sugarUnrefined or partly refined soft sugar with some molasses still in it; light brown soft sugar is the usual substitute. Depending on its grade it may add some colour as well as sweetness.
- SuetShredded beef suet is sold boxed in the UK and can be ordered elsewhere; a butcher will give you the raw kidney fat, which you grate frozen. Vegetable suet works with a slightly softer crumb.
- The clothScald the cloth, wring it, flour the inside generously, then tie it loosely, as the recipe directs, leaving room for the pudding to swell. The flour forms the skin that holds the shape. A buttered basin of about 3 pints covered with pleated parchment and foil is easier and less prone to letting water in; the mixture is too bulky for a 2-pint basin, and basin timings can differ from the five hours given for the cloth.
- Boiling for five hoursThe water must stay at a rolling boil the whole time and must be topped up from a kettle of boiling water, never cold, or the pudding stops rising and goes sodden. Stand the cloth pudding on an upturned saucer or a trivet so it does not scorch on the pan base.
- The baking-powder versionThree eggs plus three heaped teaspoons of baking powder, as the recipe allows, should give a lighter, more cake-like result; the six-egg version will set firmer. The recipe itself says nothing about how long either keeps.
- ServingFive or six portions, as stated. "Sweet sauce" here means a simple sweetened white sauce or a melted butter-and-sugar sauce; a brandy or rum butter also suits it and covers for the spirits the economical version leaves out.
Boiled plum pudding descends from the medieval-into-Tudor plum pottage, a thickened meat broth with dried fruit, which lost its meat and gained flour and breadcrumbs over the eighteenth century while keeping the suet and the word "plum" — old usage for raisins and currants generally, not the fresh fruit. The pudding cloth, generally traced to the seventeenth century, is what freed the mixture from the animal gut it had previously been boiled in and made a round pudding possible. Cassell's prints an "economical" plum pudding defined by what it omits: no brandy, no candied citron, no almonds, and a costing of 1s. 6d. set down for the housekeeper's benefit. The option of substituting baking powder for half the eggs suggests the recipe is post-1850, when commercial chemical raising agents became cheap and widely sold in Britain.