Home › The Principles of Cookery › Raisin Pudding, Economical
Raisin Pudding, Economical
Shred eight ounces of beef suet very finely, and mix with it one pound of flour, a pinch of salt, a dessert-spoonful of moist sugar, a tea-spoonful of baking powder, the eighth of a nutmeg grated, and ten ounces of stoned raisins. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly, and stir in with them as much milk as will make a thick batter. Pour the preparation into a buttered dish, and bake in a well-heated oven. Turn out the pudding, strew sugar over it, and serve. This pudding may be boiled as well as baked. Time to bake, one hour and a half. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. Sufficient for seven or eight persons.
A plain suet pudding of the kind British households made when eggs were dear. The proportions are sound; only the vagueness about oven heat and the suet itself need attention.
- Oven heat"Well-heated" is not a fixed temperature; for a pudding of this size a moderate to moderately hot oven, in the region of 350-375F (180-190C), is the usual modern equivalent. At an hour and a half in a deep dish that gives you a browned top and a set, slightly damp crumb; check the centre with a skewer at 75 minutes.
- SuetEight ounces of shredded beef suet is 225g. Packaged shredded suet, beef or vegetable, works directly; a block of fresh suet from a butcher should be chilled hard and grated. Butter frozen and grated is the usual substitute, though it gives a shorter, less spongy crumb.
- Moist sugarMoist sugar is unrefined soft brown sugar, damp and clumping. Light brown sugar is the closest thing on a shelf now. A dessertspoon is about 2 teaspoons, so roughly 10g -- this is barely sweetened, which is why sugar is strewn over at the table.
- Baking powderOne teaspoon to a pound (450g) of flour is very light leavening by modern standards; Victorian baking powders varied a good deal in composition and strength. Two teaspoons gives a better rise if you are baking rather than boiling, and plain flour is what is meant.
- Milk quantityNo amount is given because it depended on the flour. Expect somewhere in the region of 300-450ml to reach a thick batter that drops heavily from the spoon rather than pouring; add it gradually and stop when it drops rather than runs.
- NutmegAn eighth of a whole nutmeg is about a quarter teaspoon grated. Grate it fresh at the last moment; pre-ground nutmeg has lost most of what the recipe is after.
- Boiling insteadIf you take the alternative, put the batter in a buttered basin, cover with pleated greaseproof and foil or a floured cloth tied down, and steam in a covered pan of simmering water for about two hours, topping up the water. A boiled version is denser and moister than the baked.
- Yield and servingSeven or eight portions as stated, which is accurate for a pound of flour. Custard, cream or a plain sweet white sauce is the period accompaniment.
Suet puddings were the backbone of the nineteenth-century English dinner, and the qualifier "economical" in the title is doing real work: this is the cheap cousin of a proper plum pudding, with no eggs, no brandy, no candied peel and only a dessertspoonful of sugar, leavened with baking powder instead of a raft of beaten eggs. Cassell's gives the probable cost as 1s. 2d. for seven or eight people, and that costing is characteristic of the book, which was written for households keeping careful accounts and often a single servant. Chemical baking powders became widely available in Britain from the middle of the century and appear to have been taken up for exactly this purpose -- they let a cook raise a heavy flour-and-suet batter without the expense of eggs. Raisins had to be stoned by hand, a tedious job; seedless varieties only displaced that chore later. The instruction that the pudding "may be boiled as well as baked" reflects the older method: boiling in a cloth or basin predates reliable domestic ovens, and many families went on doing it because it needed only a pot over the fire.