Home › The Principles of Cookery › Regent's Pudding
Regent's Pudding
Grate two ounces of the white meat of a cocoanut. Mix with this two ounces of finely-grated bread-crumbs, two ounces of flour, three ounces of finely-shredded beef suet, a table-spoonful of picked and washed currants, a table-spoonful of chopped raisins, and a little sugar. Mix these ingredients thoroughly, and beat them up with two eggs and one-eighth of a pint of milk. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin, put over it a piece of buttered writing-paper, and tie it in a cloth. Plunge it into boiling water, and let it boil quickly until done enough. Turn it out carefully, and before sending to table, pour over it a little custard-sauce pleasantly flavoured with vanilla. Time to boil, about three hours. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A small steamed suet pudding of the plainer Victorian sort, enriched with fresh coconut rather than the usual heavy load of dried fruit. Nothing about it is difficult, but the vessel, the covering and the water level all need attention.
- The hinge: keep the water boiling and topped upThe recipe says to plunge the basin into boiling water and boil quickly for the full three hours. Set the basin on a trivet or folded cloth in a deep pan with water well up the sides, and add more boiling water as it evaporates. If the pan boils dry the pudding scorches and the mixture sets in streaks.
- "Buttered writing-paper" and the clothUse buttered parchment, then foil, pleated across the centre so the pudding can rise, tied under the rim with string. The cloth over the top was insurance against water seeping in; foil does that job now, and a string handle across the top makes lifting the hot basin out much easier.
- Basin sizeUse a basin of about 1.5 pints (3 cups) and fill it no more than three-quarters full. Overfilling is the usual cause of a pudding that sticks and refuses to turn out.
- One-eighth of a pint of milkAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so this is 2.5 fl oz — about 5 tablespoons. The batter should be thick and dropping, not pourable; add a spoonful more milk only if the crumbs have drunk everything.
- Coconut"White meat of a cocoanut" means fresh coconut, grated. Frozen grated coconut, thawed, is the closest substitute. Desiccated coconut is far drier and will pull moisture out of the batter; if using it, allow a little extra milk and expect a coarser texture.
- SuetThree ounces of beef suet, shredded fine. Packaged shredded suet, beef or vegetable, works as written; block suet should be frozen and grated. Chilled grated butter is the nearest non-suet option, though the crumb comes out closer and less light.
- Testing for done"Until done enough" means a skewer into the centre comes out clean and the pudding feels springy. Let it stand five minutes off the heat before turning out, which helps it shrink from the basin.
- Custard sauceA thin pouring custard, not a set one: egg yolks, sugar, milk and vanilla stirred over low heat until it coats a spoon, around 175–180F. It is meant to be loose enough to run down the sides.
- YieldThree or four servings, as the original states — a genuinely small pudding by Victorian standards.
Puddings named for the Regent — the future George IV, whose regency ran from 1811 to 1820 — were a stock flattery of nineteenth-century cookery books, applied to sauces, soups and sweets alike, and the name rarely indicates any documented connection to him. What marks this one as late Victorian is the coconut. Whole nuts arrived in British ports in quantity as steam shipping shortened the passage from the West Indies and Ceylon. The construction is otherwise entirely traditional: suet for richness, breadcrumbs and flour for body, a token spoonful each of currants and raisins, and three hours in the boiling pot — a long-established way of making a hot sweet dish in kitchens without a reliable oven.