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Strawberry Hydropathic Pudding
Although instructions are given for making this pudding with strawberries only, any other fruit, or any mixture of fruits, may be made into a pudding in the same way. Take a basin the size that the pudding should be. Put at the bottom a round piece of stale crumb of bread about the size of a five-shilling piece. Place round this, in an upright position, and about an inch apart from one another, fingers of bread, three or four inches long, according to the depth of the basin. Pick some strawberries, and boil them with a spoonful or two of water and as much sugar as will be required to sweeten them pleasantly, until they are reduced to pulp. Put the hot fruit gently into the basin with a spoon, so as to disturb the bread as little as possible; cover the surface of the fruit with little odds and ends of bread cut up into small dice, and press the pudding by putting a plate upon it with a weight on the top. Leave it in a cold place for three or four hours, or all night if convenient. When wanted, remove the weight and the plate, turn the pudding upon a dish, and serve. It will come out in a shape. A little custard or cream served with it will be a great improvement. The pudding derives its name from the fact that, thus made, it is served at one or two hydropathic establishments where the patients are not allowed to partake of pastry. Time, about a quarter of an hour to boil the strawberries.
This is what most cooks now call summer pudding, described before the name settled. The original gives no fruit quantity and no basin size, so the proportions below are the main thing to fix.
- Quantities and yieldA 1½-pint (750 ml) pudding basin takes roughly 1½ lb (700 g) strawberries and 4-6 oz (110-170 g) sugar, and serves six. Expect to use most of a small white loaf, day-old, crusts removed.
- A five-shilling pieceA crown measured about 1½ inches across, so the disc of bread for the base is small — a coin-sized plug, not a full round. The upright fingers set an inch apart do the real work of holding the walls.
- Cut the boiling right downA quarter of an hour reduces strawberries to jam and drives off the fresh flavour. Three to five minutes over moderate heat, just until the juice runs freely and the berries slump, is enough; the bread will absorb the liquid as it stands.
- Strawberries alone are the weak choiceThey give pale, thin juice and little pectin. The book does allow any other fruit, or any mixture of fruits, made in the same way; a handful of raspberries, redcurrants or blackcurrants in with the strawberries gives the deep colour and set that this pudding is now known for.
- Line the basinCling film pressed into the basin before the bread goes in, with plenty overhanging, makes the turning-out reliable. The original depends on the fruit-soaked bread holding together unaided, which it sometimes does not.
- Weight and timeThree or four hours is the minimum; overnight in the refrigerator under a plate and a tin or two is much better. Any dry patches of bread showing on the surface can be painted with reserved juice before serving.
- The gaps matterThe fingers of bread are set an inch apart, so fruit fills the gaps and the finished pudding tends to be marbled with juice rather than being a solid bread shell. Do not close them up.
The odd name is explained in the recipe itself: hydropathic establishments were the water-cure spas that flourished in Britain from the 1840s onward, at Malvern, Ilkley, Ben Rhydding and elsewhere, where treatment meant cold baths, wet sheets, walking and a plain diet with pastry and rich crusts forbidden. A pudding built from stale bread and stewed fruit, with no butter, suet or flour paste in it, slipped through those rules, and the recipe itself says it took the name of the regime rather than of the fruit. The same construction is what later cookery books call summer pudding, a term that appears not to have become common until around the turn of the twentieth century. The book makes the general point outright, offering the strawberries only as an example.