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Snowdon Pudding
8 ounces of white bread crumbs 6 ounces of butter 3 ounces of sugar 3 tablespoons of jam--peach or apricot Mix the bread crumbs and butter together with the sugar and jam. Steam in a well-greased basin for about three hours. Serve with a sauce of the same jam as used in the pudding, and whipped cream.
A steamed pudding stripped to four ingredients, with butter standing in for the suet of older versions. It works, but it is very rich and needs some care over the crumbs and the steaming.
- Weights, in cups8 oz fresh white breadcrumbs is a generous 4 cups, loosely packed; 6 oz butter is 1 1/2 sticks; 3 oz sugar is a scant 1/2 cup. Weigh the crumbs if you can, since cup measures for crumbs vary wildly with how coarse they are.
- Crumbs must be softUse fresh crumbs from a day-old loaf, crusts removed. Dried or packaged crumbs absorb differently and give a sandy, heavy pudding with no lift at all.
- The butter is the binderThere are no eggs, flour or milk here, so soften the butter and work it thoroughly into the crumbs until the mixture holds together when pressed. If it stays crumbly, add a spoonful or two of milk.
- Basin size and coveringA "basin" is a pudding bowl; this quantity suits a 1 1/2-pint (about 850 ml) one, filled no more than three-quarters. Butter it well, cover with a pleated round of greased parchment and foil, and tie or crimp it down so no water gets in.
- SteamingStand the basin on a trivet or folded cloth in a deep pan, with boiling water reaching halfway up the sides, lid on, water topped up from the kettle as it drops. Never let it boil dry.
- Three hours is longer than neededThree hours may be longer than needed -- with no raw flour or eggs to set, a pudding of this size is likely cooked through well before the three hours the recipe specifies, and prolonged steaming risks the butter weeping out.
- Turning out and yieldLet it stand five minutes before inverting onto a warm plate so it firms enough to hold its shape. Serves four to six -- small portions, given the butter.
- The sauceWarm the same jam with a splash of water or lemon juice and sieve it if it has large fruit pieces, so it pours rather than sits in lumps.
Snowdon pudding takes its name from the mountain in north Wales, and it is often said to have been a speciality of the inns at the foot of it, the Pen-y-Gwryd among them, served to climbers coming down off the ridge. Eliza Acton printed a version in 1845, in which raisins were pressed round the buttered mould, with breadcrumbs, ground rice, suet and lemon marmalade or zest inside. What appears here is a much reduced descendant: no raisins, no lemon, and butter in place of the suet. Beef suet was the standard fat for British steamed puddings, so any kitchen avoiding it had to substitute, and butter was the obvious swap.