Home › Cookery › Christmas Plum Pudding
Christmas Plum Pudding
Half a loaf of bread (grated). 1 pound currants. 2 pounds stoned raisins. 1 pound chopped suet. 6 eggs, and 2 pieces of citron cut up. Beat the yolks of the eggs with two cups of flour and some milk, then stir in the other ingredients, adding a little salt and ginger. If too stiff, add more milk. The water must be boiling when the pudding is put in. It will take two hours to cook.--Mrs. M. E. J. B.
A plain boiled suet pudding of the old school, written for a cook who already knew how to tie up a pudding cloth. The instructions leave out the vessel, the cloth and most of the quantities, so the gaps are worth filling before you start.
- Half a loaf, gratedLoaf sizes varied, so the quantity cannot be recovered exactly. Aim for roughly 4 to 5 cups of dry breadcrumbs, grated from stale bread rather than pulsed from fresh, or the batter will slump.
- SuetBeef suet is the kidney fat, and it must be shredded or chopped fine and cold so it melts slowly and leaves the crumb open. Packaged shredded suet works; butter does not behave the same way and will give a heavier, greasier pudding.
- The eggsOnly the yolks are called for in the mixing, and the whites are never mentioned again. Either beat the whites and fold them in last for lift, or use all six eggs whole.
- Stoned raisins and currants"Stoned" simply means the seeds have been removed, which modern raisins already are. Currants here are dried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold in blocks or diced tubs at holiday time. Two "pieces" is vague; about 1/2 cup diced suits this quantity of fruit.
- Boiling water is the hingeThe pudding goes into water already at a rolling boil, and the water must stay at a boil and stay above the pudding for the whole cooking. A drop off the boil, or a pot that runs dry, gives a soggy band through the middle.
- Two hours is shortTwo hours will set a pudding of this size, though many recipes for a batter of five or six pounds call for four to six hours of steady boiling; a reheated pudding is better than an underdone one.
- Vessel and clothTraditionally a floured, scalded cloth tied loosely to allow swelling, or, more simply, a greased pudding basin large enough to hold this quantity of batter with room to rise, covered with pleated parchment and foil and set on a trivet in a deep pot.
- Salt and ginger"A little" means about a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of ground ginger for this volume. It is a restrained spicing compared with English versions that pile on cinnamon, nutmeg, mace and cloves.
- YieldRoughly 12 to 16 servings. It keeps well wrapped and cold, and slices reheat by steaming for half an hour.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877) was assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housewives, which is why this pudding carries only a set of initials rather than an author. The plum pudding itself is English, descended from the spiced meat-and-fruit "plum porridge" served at the start of a Christmas dinner in the seventeenth century; the "plums" are raisins and currants, an older English usage in which any dried fruit could be a plum. By the time this book was printed the porridge had thickened into a boiled pudding stiff enough to turn out whole, and it had become firmly attached to Christmas dinner in Virginia as in Britain. This particular recipe is sparing with spice — salt and ginger only — and stretches its flour with grated stale bread, a sensible use of the household's leftover loaf.