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Plum Pudding (No. 1)
1 pound Five Roses flour 1 pound suet 1 pound raisins 1 pound currants ½ pound bread crumbs 1 cup brown sugar 1 cup molasses 1 cup milk 5 eggs (more eggs may be added) 1 teaspoon soda ½ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon spices ¼ pound citron ¼ pound orange peel.
Steam 5 hours. Serve hot with sauce.
Note-See Sponge Pudding No. 1 for substitute for the above. 4 eggs
This is a full-sized Edwardian Christmas pudding: roughly five pounds of fruit, flour and fat before the liquids go in. Read the quantities before you start, because the batter will not fit in an ordinary pudding basin.
- Scale and yieldThe mix comes to something like seven pounds, enough to fill two large pudding basins or one very big mould, and will serve a crowd. Puddings of this size were commonly made in multiples and kept.
- SuetBeef suet, the hard kidney fat, grated or shredded and tossed with a spoonful of the flour so it stays separate. Butchers will still supply it on request; packaged shredded suet keeps in the freezer. Frozen suet grates far more easily than fresh.
- "½ teaspoon spices"Deliberately vague, and by modern standards very restrained for this volume of batter. Something like a mixed-spice blend -- cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, mace -- is the likely intention, and a modern cook would probably want considerably more across a pudding this size.
- Soda and molassesThe teaspoon of soda is there to react with the acid in the molasses, not as a general leavener. Dissolve it in the milk and add it near the end, then get the puddings into the steamer promptly.
- The egg countThe list says five eggs, while a stray "4 eggs" sits at the foot after the cross-reference to Sponge Pudding No. 1; which recipe it belongs to is not clear. Take the five in the ingredient list as the working figure, and note that the parenthesis invites more if the mixture looks dry.
- SteamingFill the greased basins two-thirds full, cover with pleated parchment and foil or a floured cloth tied under the rim, and keep the water at a steady simmer halfway up the basin. Top up with boiling water as it evaporates; if the pan boils dry the pudding scorches and the basin can crack.
- Five hours is not an exaggerationA pudding this dense needs the full time to set the eggs and gelatinise the flour throughout. It is done when a skewer comes out clean and the surface is dark and springy, not tacky.
- Keeping and reheatingCool completely in the basin, re-cover with fresh parchment, and keep it cold. Steam a further hour or two to reheat before serving.
- SauceThe recipe says only "Serve hot with sauce." A hard sauce (butter creamed with sugar and brandy) or a hot brandy or lemon sauce would both suit a pudding of this type.
The Five Roses Cook Book was compiled from recipes sent in by Canadian housewives and published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to sell its flour, which is why the brand is named in the ingredient list of so many entries. Plum pudding by this date contained no plums: the word had meant raisin or dried fruit generally since roughly the seventeenth century, and the dish is usually traced to older spiced meat-and-fruit pottages that gradually shed their meat while keeping the suet. What survives here is the pattern of a boiled pudding built on a cloth or basin rather than an oven, which mattered in kitchens where oven space was scarce and a stovetop pot was not.