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Christmas Plum Pudding No. 3
1 pound each of raisins and currants 1 pound of bread crumbs 1/4 pound each of candied lemon, citron and orange 4 ounces of flour 1/2 pound sugar 1 dozen each of sweet and bitter almonds 1 pound of butter 1 nutmeg Grated rind of a lemon 1/2 pint milk 2 sherry-glasses brandy Stone the raisins, pick the currants, shred the candied lemon, citron, and orange; blanch, chop and pound the almonds, and grate the nutmeg. Mix all well together with the fresh lemon rind, bread crumbs, sugar and flour. Warm the butter slightly, and beat it up, and then add it to the other ingredients, mixing thoroughly. Cover the mixture carefully, and set it aside for at least six hours; it is better left over night. Then add the milk and brandy, and mix again thoroughly. Put the mixture into buttered molds, and steam for seven hours.
This pudding is workable nineteenth-century technique in every respect but one: the dozen bitter almonds. That single line takes it out of the range of things to cook today.
- Bitter almonds are the problemBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed, chopped or wetted — exactly what this recipe instructs. Pounding a dozen of them into a batter is the most efficient possible way to liberate that cyanide.
- The dose is not trivialThe dose is not negligible -- A dozen bitter almonds is not a negligible amount of amygdalin, though the pudding is large and is cut into many portions. Hydrogen cyanide is volatile and long steaming will drive off some of it, but there is no way for a home cook to know how much remains.
- They are not sold as food anymoreRaw bitter almonds are effectively unavailable as a retail food: sale is prohibited in the United States and restricted, or subject to hydrocyanic acid limits, in Canada, the UK, Australia and the EU. A supermarket product labelled "bitter almond" is generally an extract or flavouring rather than the nut, and is a different product entirely.
- Not interchangeable with apricot kernelsOlder books sometimes substitute apricot or peach kernels for bitter almonds. These carry the same amygdalin and the same risk, and cases of cyanide poisoning from eating them are documented in the modern medical literature. They are not a workaround.
- The rest of the formula is period-normalA pound each of raisins and currants against four ounces of flour and a pound of breadcrumbs is standard for a rich Victorian pudding of this type; the crumbs, not the flour, do the structural work.
- If you want to make a plum puddingUse a current recipe. A modern Christmas pudding gets the same faintly marzipan note from a few drops of almond extract or from ground sweet almonds, and there is no shortage of tested versions.
Christmas plum pudding has contained no plums since at least the eighteenth century — "plums" was the older English word for dried fruit generally, and raisins and currants took over the name. What makes this version notable is that the defining ingredient of a proper Christmas pudding in the period was beef suet, and here a pound of butter stands in its place. That substitution explains the seven-hour steam and the heavy proportion of breadcrumbs, which together do the work of setting a pudding that has no rendered animal fat to firm it up. The dozen bitter almonds alongside a dozen sweet ones were a common Victorian flavouring trick, valued for the intense marzipan aroma that sweet almonds alone cannot give; the poisonous nature of the bitter almond was known at the time, and cookbooks of the era seem generally to have assumed small quantities were acceptable. Regulators no longer agree.