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Marmalade Pudding
One-half pound of bread crumbs, one-half pound of brown sugar, one-half pound of beef suet cut very fine, four eggs and one small can of marmalade.
Mix all together, put in close shape, and boil for three hours. -Mrs W. K. Muir, Detroit.
A steamed suet pudding of the plainest Victorian type: no flour, no spice, no leavening, with marmalade doing all the flavouring. The instructions assume a cook who has made a dozen of these, so the mechanics need spelling out.
- "Close shape" is a covered mouldA "shape" is a pudding mould or basin; "close" means sealed so no water gets in. Butter a 1.5- to 2-quart mould, fill it no more than two-thirds full to allow for swelling, and cover with a lid or with buttered parchment and foil tied down under the rim.
- Boil means steamBoil, and how it was done -- With a closed mould the period instruction meant lowering it into a pot of boiling water, on a rack or folded cloth, to cook at a steady bubble; steaming with boiling water coming halfway up the sides, lid on and the water at a bare simmer, is the gentler modern equivalent. Either way, top up with boiling water as it evaporates; if the pot runs dry the mould scorches and the pudding is finished.
- Weights to volumesHalf a pound of soft stale bread crumbs is roughly 4 cups loosely packed; half a pound of brown sugar is a little over 1 cup packed. Use stale bread crumbs rather than fine dried commercial crumbs, which pack much heavier and give a leaden result.
- Beef suetSuet is the hard fat from around the kidneys, sold by butchers on request and rarely on display. Chill or freeze it, grate it coarsely, and toss it with a spoonful of the crumbs so the shreds stay separate. Packaged shredded suet, fresh or vegetable, works directly.
- "One small can of marmalade"The size is not recoverable with any precision, but a standard modern jar of orange marmalade, about 1 to 1 1/4 cups, is the right order of magnitude. Bitter Seville marmalade stands up to the sugar better than a mild breakfast type.
- No flour, no leaveningThe eggs and crumbs are the entire structure, so the pudding sets dense and moist rather than cakey. Beat the eggs before adding them and mix thoroughly; unevenly distributed egg leaves wet streaks that three hours of steam will not correct.
- Doneness and unmouldingThree hours is right for a full-sized mould. Let it stand five to ten minutes off the heat before turning out, or the surface tears. A skewer to the centre should come out clean of raw batter.
- Yield and servingServes eight to ten. It expects a sauce: hard sauce, thin custard, or warmed marmalade let down with a little water. Leftovers reheat well in the mould over steam.
Suet puddings boiled in a cloth or basin were the backbone of English dessert cookery, and they crossed to American tables with little modification beyond the cook's choice of sweetening. This one belongs to the family of "cabinet" and marmalade puddings that used up stale bread and a jar of preserves, and it is credited to Mrs. W. K. Muir of Detroit. The reference to a can rather than a jar of marmalade may hint at the era when commercially tinned preserves were becoming ordinary pantry goods, though a single word will bear only so much weight, a convenience perhaps worth naming in a recipe that otherwise assumes you can render and chop your own suet.