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English Plum Pudding
1/4 cup crisco 2 tablespoons karo sirup 1/3 cup chopped walnuts 1/3 cup sugar 2/3 cup grated bread crumbs 1/6 package raisins 1/4 package dried currants 1/4 cup chopped citron 2 tablespoons peach juice, cherry juice, or other fruit juice 1 egg white, beaten 2/3 cup milk, more or less A few grains salt Melt the crisco and stir it into the karo sirup. Mix with this all the rest of the ingredients except the milk and white of egg; then stir in enough milk to make the mixture rather soft. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg white. Put into an oiled brown-bread tin or pudding mold. Cover and steam three hours, or steam in individual molds. Unmold and serve with plum pudding sauce. PUDDING SAUCES Custard Sauce--No. 1 1 cup milk 2 tablespoons sugar 2 egg yolks 1/4 teaspoon vanilla A few grains salt Heat the milk, with the sugar, and salt, in a double boiler. When hot, beat the egg yolks, stir some of the hot milk into them, then stir them into the hot milk, and stir till the mixture thickens slightly, and will coat a silver spoon dipped into it. This will take only a moment. Too long cooking will cause the custard to curdle, and spoil it. Just as soon as the custard is sufficiently cooked, take it from the fire, and set the dish containing it in cold water. Stir in the vanilla.
Custard Sauce--No. 2 1 cup milk 2 tablespoons sugar 1 egg yolk 2 teaspoons cornstarch 1/4 teaspoon vanilla A few grains salt Save out one tablespoon of the milk. Heat the remainder of the milk in a double boiler. Mix together the sugar and cornstarch, and stir into it the tablespoon of milk and the egg yolk. Stir this mixture into the hot milk, and cook till it coats a spoon.
For Lemon Custard Sauce use the grated yellow part of the rind of one-fourth lemon or one-fourth teaspoon lemon flavoring instead of the vanilla.
A small, thrifty plum pudding that replaces the traditional suet with shortening and the brandy with fruit juice. It is a steamed pudding, so the three hours are not negotiable, but the quantities are and the package measures need translating.
- "1/6 package" and "1/4 package"Package sizes were not standardised, so these cannot be converted with any confidence; if the carton was around a pound, the amounts come to roughly 2 1/2 oz raisins and 4 oz currants, about 1/2 cup and 3/4 cup. The original is genuinely imprecise here; weigh rather than guess, and err toward more fruit than less.
- Crisco and KaroBoth brands are still sold: Crisco is an all-vegetable shortening, though the formulation has changed over the years, and Karo is corn syrup, sold in light and dark versions (the recipe does not say which). Any neutral solid shortening or melted butter works for the first, though butter will firm the pudding slightly more on cooling.
- Grated bread crumbsThese are soft crumbs grated from a stale loaf, not dry packaged crumbs. Dry crumbs absorb far more liquid; if that is all you have, expect to add milk well past the 2/3 cup and stop when the batter drops heavily from a spoon.
- The brown-bread tinA cylindrical, lidded steaming mold of about 1 quart. A pudding basin, coffee can or heatproof bowl covered tightly with foil and tied does the same job. Oil it well and fill no more than two-thirds.
- Steaming, not boilingSet the covered mold on a rack in a deep pot, add boiling water to come halfway up the sides, and keep it at a bare simmer for the full three hours, topping up with boiling water as it evaporates. The recipe gives no time for individual molds; around an hour is a reasonable starting point, tested rather than trusted.
- Custard sauce temperatureBoth sauces thicken at around 175-180F, well below a simmer. The warning about curdling is the important line in the whole page: pull the pan the moment the custard coats a spoon and cool it in a water bath. The cornstarch version in No. 2 is more forgiving of a distracted cook.
- YieldAbout four to six servings — this is a modest pudding by plum-pudding standards, meant for a family table rather than a Christmas crowd.
- KeepingWith no suet, no alcohol and comparatively little sugar, this will not age for months the way a traditional pudding does. Treat it as something to eat within a few days, refrigerated, and resteam slices to reheat.