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Plum Pudding, Excellent, made without Eggs
INGREDIENTS for pudding for 6 persons-lb. of flour, 6 oz. of raisins, 6 oz. of currants, 1/4 lb. of chopped suet, 1/4 lb. of brown sugar, 1/4 lb. of mashed carrot, 1/4 lb. of mashed potatoes, 1 tablespoonful of treacle, 1 oz. of candied lemonpeel, 1 oz. of candied citron. AVERAGE COST, 1s.
Mix the flour, currants, suet and sugar well together; have ready the above proportions of mashed carrot and potato, which stir into the other ingredients; add PLUM PUDDING. the treacle and lemon-peel; but put no liquid in the mixture, or it will be spoiled.
Tie it loosely in a cloth, or, if put in a basin, do not quite fill it, as the pudding should have room to swell, and boil it for 4 hours. Serve with brandy-sauce.
This pudding is better for being mixed overnight.
TIME.-4 hours.
SEASONABLE in winter.
An eggless Christmas pudding bound with mashed root vegetables rather than eggs and liquid. The moisture in the carrot and potato is the whole structure of the thing, which is why the instruction not to add liquid is emphatic.
- The flour quantity is ambiguousThe text reads "lb. of flour" with the fraction apparently dropped in printing. Half a pound is the most likely reading, since it matches the 1/2 lb of combined carrot and potato; treat it as a half-pound and check that the mixture holds together in a mass rather than crumbling.
- No liquid means no liquidThe mashed carrot and potato are the binder and the only moisture. Milk, ale or beaten egg added "to help" will make a wet batter that boils into a sodden mass rather than the close crumb this pudding wants.
- TreacleBritish black treacle, not golden syrup. Unsulphured molasses is the closest American equivalent; blackstrap is harsher and will dominate.
- SuetShredded beef suet, sold packaged in the UK and available frozen or from a butcher elsewhere. Vegetarian suet works. Frozen grated butter is a substitute but melts sooner and gives a slightly denser pudding.
- Candied citronThe peel of the citron fruit, sold as flat translucent slabs or diced. Candied orange peel is the usual stand-in; mixed peel already contains some.
- Boiling the basinFill a pudding basin no more than three-quarters, cover with pleated parchment and foil or a tied cloth, and set it on a trivet or folded cloth in a pan of simmering water reaching halfway up. Keep a kettle at hand and top up with boiling water so the pan never runs dry over four hours.
- The cloth methodIf tying in a cloth, scald and flour the cloth first and tie loosely, leaving room to swell. A floured cloth forms the skin that holds the pudding; an unfloured one lets water in.
- Mixing overnightWorth doing. The flour hydrates from the vegetables and the dried fruit softens, which matters more here than in an egg-and-brandy pudding.
- Yield and keepingServes six as written. Without eggs, alcohol or a large sugar load this is not a pudding for long maturing; eat it within a few days, reheating by steaming for about an hour.
Puddings thickened with grated carrot and potato belong to the long British tradition of stretching expensive ingredients, and they appear in cookery books well before Beeton's time — carrot pudding recipes are common in eighteenth-century collections, where the sweetness of the root stood in for part of the sugar. The interest of this version is what it leaves out: no eggs, no brandy, no milk, and a stated cost of one shilling, against the rich Christmas puddings elsewhere in the same book, which call for a large number of eggs and a measure of brandy. Vegetable-bound puddings of this kind reappeared whenever eggs were dear or rationed, and eggless carrot-and-potato puddings were widely promoted in Britain during the Second World War. The suggested brandy sauce is the concession to the season, added at the table rather than built into a pudding that had to be made cheaply.