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Christmas Plum Pudding
Clean, wash and dry i pound of currants, take 1 pound of seeded raisins. Mix with ¼ pound each of chopped candied orange and lemon peel, 1 pound of suet chopped fine, ¾ of a pound of fine stale bread crumbs, ¼ of a pound of sifted flour, ¼ of a pound of brown sugar. Beat 5 eggs, add ½ pint of brandy or sweet cider and pour over the dry ingredients. Add 1/4 of a nutmeg grated, the grated rind of I lemon and mix very thoroughly. Pack in small greased molds or covered kettles. Boil steadily for six hours and set away in a cold place. When used boil for two hours longer and serve with a hard sauce flavored with vanilla and brandy or sherry.
A traditional boiled suet pudding, made ahead and re-steamed on the day. Nothing here is difficult, but the proportions and the long boil need translating.
- The quantitiesRead the fractions as quarter- and three-quarter-pounds: 1/4 lb each candied orange and lemon peel, 3/4 lb breadcrumbs, 1/4 lb sifted flour. The brown sugar figure has lost its numerator in this printing; on the same pattern it is most likely 1/4 lb.
- Total sizeThe dry ingredients come to about 4 3/4 lb before the eggs and liquid, enough to fill roughly three 1-quart basins or a larger number of small moulds.
- SuetBeef suet from a butcher, chopped or grated fine and kept cold, is what the recipe means. Packaged shredded suet works directly; frozen grated butter is a common substitute but gives a softer, less open crumb.
- Filling the mouldsGrease well and fill only two-thirds full, since the pudding swells. Cover with pleated parchment and foil and tie down, or use a lidded basin, so no water reaches the batter.
- "Boil steadily" means steam"Boil steadily" -- The sealed moulds go into boiling water; standing them on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water halfway up and holding a bare simmer for the six hours is the practical equivalent. Top up with boiling water as it falls; if the pot boils dry the pudding scorches.
- Storing"Set away in a cold place" was a larder. Cool completely, re-cover with fresh parchment and foil, and refrigerate; the brandy version keeps for weeks, the cider version is best used within a week.
- The second boilTwo hours of steaming to reheat is right for a full-size quart pudding. Small individual moulds need only about 45 minutes.
- Hard sauceBeat softened butter with about twice its weight in sifted confectioners' sugar until pale, then flavour with vanilla and a spoonful of brandy or sherry. Chill it firm so it melts over the hot pudding.
Plum pudding carries the older sense of "plum" as any dried fruit, a usage left over from medieval and Tudor cookery when raisins and currants were the plums in question. Its ancestor is generally traced to spiced meat-and-fruit pottages thickened with breadcrumbs, which lost the meat but kept the suet as the pudding moved from the pot to the cloth and eventually to the basin. By the nineteenth century the boiled Christmas pudding was often said to be fixed English custom, made weeks ahead so the fruit and spirit could settle.