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Plum Pudding, Without Suet
Break three eggs into a bowl, and whisk them thoroughly. Mix smoothly with them three ounces of flour, and add three table-spoonfuls of sugar, half a small nutmeg, grated, and, very gradually, half a pint of milk flavoured with lemon-rind. Beat the mixture for some minutes. Put in three ounces of grated bread-crumbs, three ounces of raisins stoned and chopped, three ounces of currants picked and dried, and three ounces of butter broken into small pieces. When the pudding is well mixed, pour it into boiling water, and keep it boiling quickly until done enough. Send brandy sauce to table with it. Time to boil, two and a half hours. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A light boiled fruit pudding rather than the dense Christmas kind — the butter stands in for suet and the batter is thin enough to pour. Everything hinges on how you contain it before it goes into the water.
- "Pour it into boiling water"The mixture goes into a well-buttered pudding basin or a scalded, floured cloth first, not loose into the pan. Leave an inch of headroom, tie or cover firmly, and lower it into water already at a rolling boil.
- Keep the boil, top up with boiling waterThe water must stay at a fast boil for the full time and cover the pudding by at least two-thirds. Any water you add during cooking must be boiling, or the batter sets unevenly and the pudding goes heavy.
- MeasurementsHalf a pint is an imperial half-pint, 10 fl oz or about 1¼ US cups. Three ounces of flour is about ⅔ cup; three ounces of breadcrumbs is roughly one and a half cups of soft fresh crumbs, not dried packaged ones.
- Butter in place of suetKeep the butter cold and cut it into small pieces so it stays distinct in the batter; it melts during boiling and gives the richness suet would. Creamed or softened butter is likely to give a heavier, greasier result.
- "Currants picked and dried"Victorian dried fruit came with stalks, grit and stones. Modern currants and raisins need only a rinse if they seem dusty, and raisins are already stoned — chop them as directed so they suspend in the thin batter instead of sinking.
- NutmegHalf a small nutmeg grated is roughly a teaspoon. Grate it fresh; the pre-ground tin is markedly weaker.
- Testing itTwo and a half hours at a fast boil is right for a basin holding this quantity. It is done when a skewer to the centre comes out clean and the pudding shrinks slightly from the sides; rest it five minutes before turning out or it may collapse.
- Brandy sauce and yieldThe sauce meant here is the pouring kind — a sweetened cornflour or egg-thickened milk sauce finished with brandy, not hard butter. Serves five or six, as stated.
"Plum" in an English pudding name has meant dried fruit generally, not plums, since the seventeenth century, when raisins and currants were the plums of the store cupboard. The standard boiled plum pudding was bound with shredded beef suet, which gave it its keeping quality and its weight; this version does without it. The result is closer to a rich batter pudding studded with fruit. The costing — one shilling for a pudding serving five or six — is typical of the book's habit of pricing every dish.