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Saffron Pudding
Boil a table-spoonful of real saffron in half a tea-cupful of water until the decided taste and smell peculiar to the flower have been extracted and the liquor has acquired a clear light-yellow tinge. Mince finely three-quarters of a pound of suet, and mix with it a pinch of salt, half a pound of flour, half a pound of grated bread-crumbs, and a tea-spoonful of powdered ginger. When thoroughly mixed, stir in the saffron-water, three well-beaten eggs, and as much milk or cream as is required to make a light, smooth dough. Turn this into a floured cloth, tie securely, allowing room for the pudding to swell, plunge it into boiling water, and boil until done enough. Time to boil, three hours. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for six persons.
A Victorian boiled suet pudding coloured and perfumed with saffron. Two things need attention before you start: the saffron quantity is wildly generous by modern standards, and the recipe contains no sugar at all.
- Saffron quantityA tablespoon of saffron threads weighs roughly 2 g, which is an extravagant amount by any measure and will taste medicinal and bitter rather than fragrant. A large pinch, about 0.1–0.2 g, infused in a scant quarter cup of hot water for 20 minutes gives colour and aroma for a pudding this size.
- "Real saffron"The qualifier is doing real work. Victorian grocers sold safflower petals and turmeric as saffron, and adulteration was routine. Buy whole threads, not powder, and expect them to stain the liquid clear yellow-orange within minutes of steeping.
- SuetThree-quarters of a pound of beef suet to a pound of dry ingredients is a rich, close pudding. Shredded packet suet (beef or vegetable) works directly; fresh suet from a butcher must be stripped of membrane before mincing, and is easiest to grate frozen.
- No sugarThe recipe contains no sweetening at all. Puddings of this kind were commonly sent to table with a sweet sauce — a sweet white sauce, custard, or melted butter with sugar and wine — though this recipe itself gives no serving instruction. Eaten plain it will read as savoury and rather flat.
- The clothScald the cloth, wring it out, flour the inside generously and leave a good inch of slack when tying so the pudding can expand. Modern practice more often uses a buttered basin of at least two and a half to three pints, with headroom for rising, covered with pleated parchment and foil and steamed rather than boiled, which gives a lighter result and no risk of a waterlogged skin.
- BoilingKeep the water at a steady rolling boil the whole three hours and top it up from a boiling kettle. If the pot goes off the boil the pudding sinks and turns dense; if you add cold water it does the same.
- "Until done enough"Three hours is right for a pudding this size. It is cooked when a skewer through the centre comes out clean and hot to the back of the hand.
- YieldSix as written, and generously so — the original's estimate is accurate. It reheats well by steaming for 30–40 minutes.
Saffron in English puddings and cakes is older than this book by centuries: the crocus was grown commercially in Essex from the late medieval period, giving Saffron Walden its name, and Cornish saffron cake is the best-known surviving English saffron baking tradition, though its saffron came by trade rather than from the Essex fields. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the 1870s–80s, English saffron cultivation had effectively ended and the spice was an imported luxury, which may be why the recipe insists on "real" saffron — adulteration with safflower, marigold and turmeric was a standing complaint of Victorian food analysts. The pudding itself belongs to the large family of boiled suet puddings that dominated British cookery when long boiling over the range was among the cheapest ways to cook: flour, breadcrumbs, suet and eggs, tied in a cloth and left over the fire for hours with almost no attention.