Alma Pudding
—6 oz. of butter, 1/2. sugar, 1/4 lb. of sul-. INGREDIENTS for good-sizedpudding. -6 oz. of butter, lb. of flour, 1/2 lb. lib. of pounded white sugar, lb. of sultanas, 4eggs. AVERAGE COST, 18. 3d. AGE COST, 1s. 3d.
Beat the butter to a cream and strew in slowly the sugar; when these are well mixed dredge in the flour and add the currants with a few drops of vanilla flavouring if liked, and moisten with the eggs, which should first be well beaten. Butter a mould that the pudding will exactly fill, tie down with a cloth, put into boiling water and boil for 3 hours. Serve with sifted sugar strewn over the top.
TIME.-3 hours.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A plain creamed-butter pudding boiled in a mould for three hours — Victorian shorthand for what we would now call a steamed sponge. The quantities as printed are incomplete, so read the notes below before shopping.
- The quantities are unreliable as printedThe butter (6 oz) and the eggs (4) are legible, and a "1/2 lb." survives in the list, but the weights attached to flour, sugar and dried fruit are garbled. Puddings of this type are generally built on roughly equal weights of butter, sugar, flour and fruit, so somewhere between 6 oz and 1/2 lb of each is a reasonable reconstruction.
- Sultanas or currantsThe ingredient list calls for sultanas and the method calls for currants. Either works; sultanas are sweeter and plumper, currants sharper. Use one or the other rather than trying to reconcile the two.
- Boiled, not bakedThe mould is buttered, filled, covered and lowered into boiling water. Use a pudding basin, a disc of buttered baking paper, then foil or a cloth tied under the rim with string. The seal matters more than anything else here: water in the batter gives a heavy, sodden pudding.
- Fill the mould, but not to the brim"A mould that the pudding will exactly fill" means no dead air, but leave about an inch of headroom for the rise. A 1.2-litre (2-pint) basin suits the quantities above.
- Water level and heatThe water should come halfway to two-thirds up the basin and be kept at a steady low boil, topped up from a kettle as it drops. If it boils dry the basin cracks or scorches; a trivet or folded cloth under the basin stops direct contact with the pan base.
- Three hours is realUnlike many Victorian timings, this one is not excessive — a dense creamed batter in a sealed basin genuinely needs two and a half to three hours to set through. A skewer to the centre should come out clean.
- Vanilla flavouringAt this period that meant vanilla essence or a spirit tincture. A teaspoon of vanilla extract is the modern equivalent; the grated zest of a lemon is a period-appropriate alternative.
- Cost and yieldThe "average cost, 1s. 3d." is a mid-Victorian household figure and has no modern meaning. The pudding serves roughly six, turned out hot and dusted with sifted sugar as the recipe directs; custard or a sweet wine sauce is a common accompaniment today.
Puddings named after the Alma appear across mid-Victorian cookery, and the name is generally traced to the Battle of the Alma in September 1854, the first major engagement of the Crimean War and an early piece of good news for the British public. Cooks and confectioners attached fashionable military names to dishes as a matter of course — soups, cutlets and cakes acquired them in the same years — and the label rarely says anything about the contents. What the recipe itself shows is the standard English boiled pudding of the period: butter creamed with sugar, flour dredged in, eggs to moisten, dried fruit through it, then hours in a cloth-tied mould over the fire. It belongs to a tradition in which a pot of boiling water was often said to be the most dependable source of steady heat in the kitchen, and it stayed in print long afterwards.