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Plum Pudding
Ingredients.
One Lemon. Half a pound of moist Sugar. Half a pound of Beef Suet. One wineglassful of Brandy. Two ounces of Almonds. Half a Nutmeg. A little Salt.
Half a pound of Raisins.
Half a pound of Currants.
Half a pound of Sultanas.
Quarter of a pound of mixed Peel.
Quarter of a pound of Bread-crumbs.
Quarter of a pound of Flour.
This entry gives proportions only — the method, and probably a second line of ingredients, have not come down with it. Read it as a ratio sheet rather than a set of instructions.
- What is missingThere is no binding liquid, no eggs, no sugar and no spice here, and no method at all. As printed the mixture will not come together; treat the list as the fruit-and-fat base of a boiled pudding and take quantities for eggs, sugar, spice and brandy or milk from a complete recipe.
- Beef suetFresh beef suet from a butcher must be stripped of membrane and shredded or grated fine, ideally with a little of the flour to stop it clumping. Packet shredded suet, beef or vegetable, substitutes weight for weight.
- Mixed peelAt the time this meant candied orange, lemon and citron peel bought in whole caps and chopped by hand. Ready-chopped mixed peel is the equivalent; whole candied peel chopped yourself has far more flavour and a less waxy texture.
- Currants and sultanasCurrants are the small dried Zante grape, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Older stock needed picking over for stalks and grit and a rinse in warm water; modern dried fruit does not, though a soak in brandy or tea overnight improves it.
- Breadcrumbs and flourEqual weights of the two. The recipe does not say which sort of crumb; either dry white crumbs or fresh soft ones are used in puddings of this type. Crumbs keep the pudding light where flour alone makes it close and heavy.
- Yield and vesselRoughly 2 1/2 lb of dry ingredients before eggs and liquid, which will want a basin of about 3 pints, or two smaller ones. Butter the basin well, cover with pleated greaseproof and foil, and tie down.
- CookingA pudding of this size wants four to six hours steaming or boiling, with the water kept at a steady simmer and topped up from a kettle so it never drops below the shoulder of the basin. Reheat on the day by steaming a further hour or two; microwaving in short bursts works but gives a drier crumb.
- KeepingSuet puddings of this kind, if steamed thoroughly and re-covered with fresh paper, were kept for some weeks in a cool dry place. Note that as printed this list has neither sugar nor spirit, so it lacks the usual preserving elements. Once cut, refrigerate it.
Plum pudding kept the word "plum" long after the fruit left it: by the eighteenth century "plums" meant raisins and dried fruit generally, a survival from the older plum-pottage, a spiced meat-and-fruit broth thickened with bread that gradually shed its meat and stiffened into a boiled pudding. The turning point is usually traced to the pudding cloth, which freed the mixture from the animal gut or basin and let it be boiled as a solid ball. By the time this book was compiled the dish was firmly Christmas property, largely through Victorian sentiment and Dickens, and it appears here as a matter of course, with the proportions given and the method assumed known.