Fig Pudding
INGREDIENTS for large pudding.-1½ lb. of figs, 3/4 lb. of suet, 1/2 lb. of flour, 1/2 lb. of bread-crumbs, 2 eggs, milk. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 9d.
Cut the figs into small pieces, grate the bread finely, and chop the suet very small; mix these well together, add the flour, the eggs, which should be well beaten, and sufficient milk to form the whole into a stiff paste; butter a mould or basin, press the pudding into it very closely, tie it down with a cloth, and boil for 3 hours, or rather longer; turn it out of the mould. and serve with wine sauce or cream.
TIME.-3 hours, or longer.
SEASONABLE. Suitable for a winter pudding.
Fig Pudding. (Staffordshire Recipe). -INGREDIENTS for good-sized pudding.-- 1½ lb. of figs, 6 oz. of suet, lb. of flour, milk.
AVERAGE COST, 1s.
Chop the suet finely, mix with it the flour, and make these into a smooth paste about 1/2 inch, cut the figs in small pieces, and strew them over the paste; roll it up, make the ends secure, tie the pudding in a cloth, and boil it from 1 to 2 hours.
TIME.-1 to 2 hours. with milk; roll it out to the thickness of SEASONABLE at any time.
Figs, Compôte of Green. - INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons. -1 pint of syrup, 1 lb. of green figs, the the rind of lemon. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 9d.
Make a syrup as directed, boiling with it the lemon-rind, and carefully removing all the scum as it rise rises. Put in the figs, and simmer them very slowly until tonder; dish them on a glass dish; reduce FENNEL. cleansing it from any grit or dirt, and put it to the butter when this is on the point of boiling. Simmer for a minute or two, and serve in a tureen.
TIME.-2 minutes.
COMPÔTE OF FIGS. the syrup by boiling it quickly for 5 minutes; take out the lemon-peel, pour the syrup over the figs, and the compôte, when cold, will be ready for table. A little port wine or lemon-juice, added just before the figs are done, will be found an improvement.
TIME.-2 to 3 hours to stew the figs.
SEASONABLE in August and September.
Financière Sauce (for Fish).-INGREDIENTS. - pint of Spanish sauce, & pin sherry or madeira, 1/2 pint of essence of truffles, pint essence of mushrooms.
FINANCIÈRE SAUCE.
FISH, DRESSING.
Boil these ingredients together steadily can be taken by invalids, and for the for 6 minutes, then strain.
TIME.- hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Financière Sauce (for Game or Poultry). INGREDIENTS.-1 pint Spanish sauce, pint essence of truffles, pint essence of mushrooms.
Put the ingredients into a stewpan, and reduce over a good fire for 10 minutes, strain and put by till wanted.
TIME.-10 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A boiled suet pudding of the plain Victorian sort, leaned entirely on dried figs for sweetness — there is no sugar in it at all. Two versions are given: a moulded pudding and a rolled Staffordshire one.
- The hinge: keep the water boilingA cloth-tied suet pudding must go into water already at a rolling boil and stay there, topped up with boiling water from a kettle. If the pot goes off the boil the suet melts out rather than setting the crumb, and the pudding turns heavy and greasy.
- FigsThese are dried figs, not fresh. A pound is about 3 cups chopped; snip off the hard stem knobs first. If they are leathery, soak 20 minutes in warm water and drain well, or they will stay tough through three hours of steaming.
- SuetBeef suet, shredded or grated from the block while very cold. Packaged shredded suet works directly; vegetable suet is a fair substitute. Frozen butter grated on a coarse box grater will do at a pinch, though the texture is shorter and less springy.
- The mould and the clothA "basin" is a pudding basin, a heatproof bowl; for this quantity allow generous capacity, filling to about an inch below the rim to allow rise. Butter it, then cover with pleated baking parchment and foil tied with string rather than a bare cloth, and set it on a trivet or folded towel in a pan of simmering water reaching halfway up. A modern steamer or covered stockpot serves the same purpose.
- Time and donenessThree hours is not an exaggeration for this size; the pudding is done when a skewer comes out clean and hot. It reheats well — steam an hour the next day — and in fact improves for keeping a day or two.
- Wine sauceThe period sauce is a thin custard or a butter-sugar sauce flavoured with sherry or madeira. Cream, as the recipe allows, is the simpler option, and unsweetened whipped cream balances the concentrated fig sugar.
- YieldThe large pudding is described as "for large pudding" with no number; at 2 3/4 lb of dry ingredients plus eggs and milk it will serve eight to ten generously.
- The Staffordshire versionThis is a rolled suet crust with figs strewn over and rolled up like a jam roly-poly, a different pudding altogether, lighter and quicker. The flour quantity in the ingredient list has lost its fraction; a standard suet paste runs to roughly twice the weight of flour to suet, which would suggest something in the order of 12 oz of flour to the 6 oz of suet, mixed with milk to a soft dough.
Boiled suet puddings studded with dried fruit were the backbone of the English winter table, and figs — imported dried from Turkey, Spain and Portugal, cheap and long-keeping — put sweetness on a table where sugar was still a considered expense. The Staffordshire attribution reflects a real regional habit: fig puddings and fig pies were associated with the Midlands and the North West, particularly with Mid-Lent or "Fig Sunday", the Sunday before Easter, when figs were eaten in remembrance of the barren fig tree of the Gospels. Beeton's household editions carried the dish under "F" alongside its cost in shillings and pence, a detail that tells you as much about the book's purpose as any of the instructions: it was written for a mistress of the house budgeting a week's dinners, not for a cook improvising.