Home › The Principles of Cookery › Raspberry Pudding
Raspberry Pudding
Line a buttered basin with suet paste rolled out to the thickness of half an inch. Fill it with fresh raspberries, or with raspberries and red currants mixed, and sprinkle a little sugar over the top. Cover the pudding with pastry, fold the edges securely over, put the basin into a floured cloth wrung out of boiling water, plunge it into a saucepan with boiling water to cover it, and let it boil quickly until done enough. If it is necessary to add water, let it be boiling. Turn the pudding out carefully, cut a small round from the top that the steam may escape, and serve immediately. In winter time very good puddings may be made with bottled raspberries. Time to boil a moderate-sized pudding, two hours to two hours and a half. Probable cost, 1s. to 1s. 6d.
A boiled suet pudding of the plainest Victorian type: pastry, fruit, sugar, and two hours of hard water. Most of what needs saying concerns the paste and the boiling, since the book assumes both are common knowledge.
- The hinge: keep the water at a rolling boilThe instruction to add only boiling water is the one that matters. A pudding that goes off the boil takes on water through the cloth and the crust turns grey and sodden. Keep the pan covered, keep it at a genuine boil, and top up from a kettle.
- Suet paste, in proportionsThe book gives no proportions. A workable one is 8 oz plain flour to 4 oz shredded suet, a pinch of salt, and cold water to a firm dough — enough for a 1.5-pint basin with a lid; period recipes vary in how much suet they use. Packet shredded beef or vegetable suet works directly; block suet needs grating from frozen. Self-raising flour gives a lighter, more modern crust.
- Basin size and quantity of fruitNo quantities are given at all. A 1.5-pint basin takes roughly 1 lb (450 g) of raspberries, or raspberries and redcurrants mixed, with 2–3 oz (50–75 g) sugar. Fill it well: fruit collapses as it cooks and an under-filled pudding sags when turned out.
- The cloth, and the modern substituteThe floured cloth wrung out in boiling water is what keeps water off the crust. A pleated round of baking parchment and foil, tied under the rim with string and a string handle across the top, does the same job with less scalding. Stand the basin on a trivet or an upturned saucer so it does not sit on the pan base.
- Boiling versus steamingWater should come at least halfway up the basin — the original says to cover it, which requires a deep stockpot. Steaming in a covered pan with two inches of water needs topping up less often, though it may want a little longer than the stated two to two and a half hours.
- "Until done enough"For a 1.5-pint basin, two hours is the minimum and two and a half is safer; the crust should be firm and dry to the touch when uncovered. Suet crust is forgiving of extra time and unforgiving of too little.
- Bottled raspberriesThe winter version uses home-bottled fruit. Frozen raspberries are the direct equivalent — use them from frozen and cut the sugar slightly, as thawed fruit sheds a good deal of juice into the basin.
- Turning out and the steam ventRest the pudding five minutes before inverting onto a warm dish with a rim; the juice runs. The small round cut from the top is not decorative — the book says plainly that it is to let the steam escape.
- Yield and costServes four to six, with cream or a plain custard. The "1s. to 1s. 6d." is the book's own costing in shillings; suet and seasonal fruit were among the cheaper ingredients available to a Victorian kitchen.
Boiled puddings in a cloth or basin were a staple of English domestic cookery from the seventeenth century onward, and suet crust — beef fat cut into flour rather than rubbed in like butter — was among the cheapest ways to make one that would hold its shape. The recipe is really a pattern rather than a single dish: swap raspberries for apples, damsons, rhubarb or gooseberries and the method is unchanged, which may be why no fruit weights are given. Redcurrants supply acidity that raspberries alone lack. The note about bottled raspberries is a reminder of what home preserving meant before domestic freezing: a household that had put up fruit in summer could serve this in February.