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Christmas Plum Pudding No. 1
1/2 pound raisins 1/2 pound sultanas 1/2 pound almonds 1/2 pound pine kernels 1/2 pound demerara sugar 1/2 pound butter 1/4 pound mixed peel 1 pound bread crumbs 4 apples 1 lemon, rind and juice 1/2 nutmeg 2 wineglasses brandy Stone the raisins, pick over, and wash the sultanas, shred the peel, blanch the almonds, clean the pine kernels, and put them both through a nutmill, and then pound them, and grate the nutmeg and lemon rind. Mix all these with the bread crumbs, sugar, and apples which must be peeled, cored and chopped. Chop the butter, and add to the mixture with the nutmeg and lemon juice. Let the ingredients stand for a night. Add the brandy, and mix together thoroughly. Put into well buttered molds, and allow pudding to steam for seven hours, and when warming again for use, for about half the time.
A suetless, eggless plum pudding that leans on butter, fresh crumbs and grated apple for body. The main practical issues are the vague wineglass measure, the nutmill, and the long steam.
- YieldThe weighed ingredients come to about 4 1/4 lb before the apples, lemon and brandy are added, so the finished mixture is closer to 5 1/2 lb. The original gives no mold size, yield or serving figure.
- A wineglassIn British books of this period a wineglass is about 2 fl oz, so two wineglasses is roughly 1/2 cup of brandy. Older glasses ran smaller than modern ones, so treat it as a range rather than an exact figure.
- NutmillA nutmill was a small rotary grater that reduced nuts to a dry powder without oiling them. A food processor pulsed in short bursts does the same job; grind the almonds and pine nuts separately and stop before either turns to paste.
- Mixed peel and sultanasMixed peel is candied citron, orange and lemon peel, sold ready-chopped. Sultanas are golden raisins; the instruction to wash them belongs to an era of unpackaged dried fruit and can be skipped, though a rinse and thorough drying does no harm.
- Demerara sugarUse raw or light brown cane sugar with visible large crystals. Ordinary light brown sugar works; it is slightly moister, which matters little in a pudding this wet.
- BreadcrumbsThe recipe says only 'bread crumbs'; fresh soft crumbs from a plain loaf are the likely intent rather than dried or toasted ones. A pound of fresh crumbs is a large volume, around 8 cups loosely packed, and it is the whole structure of the pudding, since there is neither flour nor egg.
- The overnight standThe mixture is left to stand a night before the brandy is added; the recipe gives no reason for the order, only the sequence.
- SteamingCover each mold with buttered parchment and foil, tied down, and set on a trivet in a pot with simmering water reaching halfway up. Seven hours is authentic for a pudding of this size; check the water level hourly and top up with boiling water, because a pot that boils dry will scorch the mold.
- Storage and reheatingCool completely in the mold, re-cover with fresh parchment, and keep somewhere cool. The recipe directs reheating for about half the original time, i.e. roughly three and a half hours.
Plum pudding took its name from the older sense of "plum" as any dried fruit, chiefly raisins, and by the nineteenth century it had settled into the boiled or steamed Christmas pudding bound with suet, flour and eggs. This version departs from that pattern: there is no suet, no flour and no egg, and the binding is done by a full pound of fresh breadcrumbs, chopped butter and four apples. The half pound of almonds and half pound of pine kernels is a striking quantity of nuts, and the combination of features is consistent with the meatless and food-reform cookery current in Britain around the turn of the twentieth century, though nothing in the recipe itself fixes its origin.