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Currant Fudding, Boiled
(Plain and Economical). - INGREDIENTS for good-sized pudding.-1 lb. of flour, lb. of suet, 1/2 lb. of currants, milk. AVERAGE CosT, 10d.
Wash the currants, dry them thoroughly, and pick away any stalks or grit; chop the suet finely; mix all the ingredients together, and moisten with sufficient milk to make the pudding into a stiff batter; tie it up in a floured cloth, put it into boiling water, and boil for 3 hours; serve with a cut lemon, cold butter, and sifted sugar.
TIME.-3 hours.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A plain boiled suet pudding of the everyday Victorian sort: flour, suet, dried currants, milk, and three hours in a pot. It works, but it needs a few translations.
- The suet quantity is incompleteThe line reads "lb. of suet" with the fraction lost. Contemporary plain suet puddings run 4 to 8 oz of suet per pound of flour; 6 oz gives a good result without heaviness. Treat any figure here as your own judgement, not the book's.
- No raising agent is givenThis is a plain pudding, so it will be dense and close-textured by design. If you want it lighter, plain flour swapped for self-raising is the usual modern fix, though it stops being the pudding as written.
- Currants, not raisinsCurrants here means dried Zante currants, the small black kind, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Modern packaged currants rarely carry stalks or grit, so the washing and picking step can be skipped; a brief soak in warm water plumps them if they are dry.
- SuetBeef suet from a butcher must be trimmed of membrane and chopped or grated very fine, best done cold. Packaged shredded suet, beef or vegetarian, is used straight from the box and needs no chopping.
- "Stiff batter" means a doughFor a cloth-boiled pudding you want a stiff, cohesive mass that holds its shape when gathered, not a pourable batter. Add the milk a little at a time; too much and the pudding spreads and takes on water.
- The clothScald the cloth, wring it out, and flour the inside generously before filling; the flour forms the skin that keeps water out. Tie it loosely enough for the pudding to swell, and lower it into water already at a full boil.
- Boiling for three hoursThe hinge is that the water never stops boiling and never drops below the pudding. Keep a kettle of boiling water alongside to top up, and rest the pudding on an inverted saucer or trivet so the cloth does not scorch on the pan base. Three hours is the time the book gives for this size; a basin-steamed version will need at least as long, and often longer.
- Yield and servingA pound of flour makes a pudding for six to eight. The "cut lemon, cold butter, and sifted sugar" is the period serving: squeeze lemon over the hot slices, then butter and sugar. Golden syrup or a sweet white sauce are the later habits.
- Average costThe 10d. is pre-decimal British currency, ten pence in a shilling of twelve, and reflects Victorian prices for the cheapest sort of family pudding.
Boiled suet puddings in a floured cloth were the backbone of English family cooking from the seventeenth century until gas ovens and basin steaming pushed them aside; the cloth needed only one pot and one fire, which is why it survived so long in kitchens with neither. Mrs Beeton's book carries dozens of them, graded frankly by expense, and this one is labelled "plain and economical" for good reason: no eggs, no sugar in the mix, no brandy, just flour bound with suet and enough dried fruit to make it worth eating. The sweetening arrives at the table instead, in the sifted sugar and lemon, which kept the costly ingredient under the diner's own control. Zante currants, imported dried from Greece and the Ionian islands, take their name, generally traced to Corinth rather than to any garden currant bush.