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Christmas Pudding (Old English Recipe)
2 pounds bread crumbs 1 pound Five Roses flour (sifted) 1 teaspoon baking powder 1½ pounds beef suet (chopped finely) 1 pound currants 1½ pounds stoned raisins Steam 3 hours. Serve with any de- 1 pound brown sugar 1 teaspoon allspice sired pudding sauce. ½ 1/2 pound ground ginger 1 ounce chopped almonds 7 eggs ¼ pound mixed peel 1 tablespoon syrup ½ teaspoon lemon essence ¼ cup brandy (or wine) Milk to moisten dry ingredients.
More eggs may be added if richer pudding is desired. Mix dry ingredients in order given and let stand over night. In the morning, put into individual moulds (if so desired) and steam 8 hours, or even more. When about to be eaten, steam a couple of hours more, decorate with greens, pour over with a little cognac brandy and bring to the table blazing.
Wine sauce is usually served with this pudding, although other sauces are often used. (See Pudding Sauces.) 2 eggs
The text as printed has suffered from column bleed — the sentences "Steam 3 hours. Serve with any desired pudding sauce." and the stray "2 eggs" at the end belong to a neighbouring recipe, and one quantity is almost certainly a misprint. Read it as a very large Victorian-style plum pudding, mixed one day and steamed the next.
- The ginger is wrongHalf a pound of ground ginger against one teaspoon of allspice makes no sense and would be inedible — it is roughly 40 tablespoons of a fierce spice. Comparable puddings of the period call for a half ounce or a teaspoon or two; treat it as an ounce at the very most.
- Ignore the interpolated lines"Steam 3 hours" contradicts the instruction below it, and the trailing "2 eggs" appears to belong to another recipe on the page. The real method is: steam 8 hours or more, then a further couple of hours before serving.
- ScaleThis runs to about eight and a quarter pounds of ingredients before the eggs and milk — enough for two large 2-quart basins or a dozen small moulds. Halving or quartering is sensible for a modern table.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys; supermarket shredded suet works directly, and a butcher will sell fresh suet to be chopped or grated. Freeze it briefly first, or it smears rather than chops. Vegetarian shredded suet substitutes with no change in method.
- Stoned raisins and mixed peel"Stoned" means the pits have been taken out by hand — modern seedless raisins need nothing. Mixed peel is candied citron, orange and lemon rind, still sold in tubs at Christmas.
- SteamingFill the basins two-thirds full, cover with pleated parchment and foil tied under the rim, and stand them on a trivet in a pot of simmering water reaching halfway up. Top up with boiling water every hour or so; a dry pan is the only real way to ruin this.
- Why the second steamingThe long first cook sets the pudding so it keeps for weeks in a cool larder, darkening and mellowing. The two-hour reheat on the day is what brings it back to a hot, moist, sliceable state — it is not optional.
- FlamingWarm a small ladle of brandy until it just steams, light it away from the pot, and pour it over. Cold spirit poured on and lit will not catch reliably, and the flame is nearly invisible in a bright room.
- Baking powderA teaspoon in this bulk does almost nothing and can be left out. What lift there is comes from the eggs, not from chemical leavening.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal and distributed to buyers of its flour, which is why the recipe specifies the brand by name in the ingredient list. Puddings of this type — suet, dried fruit, breadcrumbs, spice and spirit, boiled or steamed in a cloth or basin — descend from the spiced meat-and-fruit pottages of medieval England, and the plum pudding's fixed association with Christmas is generally traced to the nineteenth century, when Victorian household writing and illustration settled it into the shape recognised today. Calling it an "Old English Recipe" in a Canadian mill's promotional book is itself telling: the dish carried the authority of the home country, and the very long steaming reflects a kitchen with a coal range going all day and a cool pantry where puddings could hang for weeks before being eaten.