Home › Cookery › Fruit Pudding (Pint grated bread crumbs pound)
Fruit Pudding (Pint grated bread crumbs pound)
1 pint grated bread crumbs. 1 pound raisins. 3/4 3/4 pound suet chopped fine. 1/2 pound sugar. 1/2 1/2 pint chopped apples. Yolks of three eggs, well beaten. Pour over the top the whites of the three eggs, frothed and sweetened Bake an hour.-Mrs.--.
A baked suet pudding of the plainest Virginia type: fruit, fat, crumbs and eggs, with a meringue lid. The original assumes you know your own oven and your own pudding dish, so a few numbers are worth filling in.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given, only "Bake an hour." A moderate oven, around 350F, is a reasonable modern choice for a baked pudding of this size. If the meringue is added early (as the original wording suggests) it will color well before the hour is out; cover loosely with foil once it browns.
- SuetBeef suet, the hard fat from around the kidneys, supplies the richness and, as it melts, keeps the crumb open. Ask a butcher, or buy shredded packaged suet. Chop or grate it very fine while cold and toss it with a spoonful of the crumbs so the pieces stay separate.
- Grated bread crumbsThese are soft crumbs grated from a stale loaf, not dry commercial crumbs, which are far denser. A pint of soft crumbs is roughly 3 to 4 ounces; using packaged dry crumbs by volume will give a heavy, sandy pudding.
- No liquid is listedThree yolks and half a pint of apple may not wet a pound of raisins and a pint of crumbs. If the mixture will not drop from the spoon, add milk (or a little brandy) a spoonful at a time until it does.
- RaisinsA pound is a great deal of fruit by modern standards and will dominate. Nineteenth-century raisins were seeded at home; today's seedless can go in as they are, and a brief soak in warm water or spirits keeps them from scorching.
- The whites on topBeat the three whites stiff with two or three tablespoons of sugar. The original pours them over and bakes the hour out; if you prefer a meringue that does not weep or toughen, add them for the last 15 to 20 minutes instead.
- Dish and yieldA buttered 2-quart baking dish is about right. This serves eight to ten in small portions, and is rich enough to want them; serve warm with hard sauce or a wine sauce.
- SeasoningThe recipe names no spice. Nutmeg, mace or a little cinnamon, and a pinch of salt, are all in keeping with puddings of this type.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, includes recipes credited only as "Mrs. --" alongside many that carry a name in full. The dish itself is the American descendant of the English boiled suet pudding: crumbs instead of flour, chopped fruit, and a great deal of hard fat, a formula generally traced to the medieval pottages that also produced Christmas plum pudding. Baking rather than boiling it in a cloth was the newer treatment, and the frothed egg-white lid is the same meringue finish Southern cooks were putting on transparent pies and puddings in the same decades. The absent spices and the unstated liquid are typical of a book written by cooks for cooks who already knew.