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Boiled Cinnamon Pudding
A considerable variation of the preceding pudding is made by adding to it 1 heaping teaspoonful of ground cinnamon-makes it of a pinkish color. Ground ginger may be used in the same way. Give all these puddings room to swell and become light when tying the pudding bag.
Not a half dozen degrees removed and we find Jack Cade Duff's relatives moving in the highest society, and presently they will be found next of kin to old plum pudding himself.
This is a variation rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes the plain boiled batter or dough pudding printed immediately above it, and only tells you what to add. A few points about boiled puddings in general are worth having before you start.
- You need the base recipeOn its own this entry gives no flour, fat, liquid or sugar. Work from the preceding boiled pudding in the same section, or any plain boiled flour-and-suet pudding, and treat the cinnamon as a flavouring addition.
- The pudding bagA boiled pudding of this kind is tied in a floured cloth. Scald the cloth, wring it out, dust the inside heavily with flour, and tie it loosely so the batter has room to expand. A tight bag gives a dense, sodden pudding.
- "Room to swell" is the hingeThe author gives this instruction for the whole group ("all these puddings"). Leave slack, and keep the bag suspended off the bottom of the pot on a trivet or an inverted plate so the base does not scorch.
- Keep the water at a bare simmerA rolling boil batters the cloth and forces water in. Simmer, keep the pudding covered with water throughout, and top up with boiling water rather than cold.
- Quantity of cinnamonA heaping teaspoon is assertive but not overwhelming with modern ground cassia, which is what much supermarket "cinnamon" is. Ground ginger is offered as a straight substitute in the same quantity; it is generally more pungent, so you may prefer a lighter hand.
- The "pinkish color"Cinnamon will tint a pale batter a warm buff-pink. Nineteenth-century ground cinnamon was sometimes adulterated or more coarsely ground than ours, so the colour may come out less evenly than the author suggests.
- Timing and servingBoiled puddings of this type generally need something in the order of 1.5 to 2 hours, a suet dough longer; the recipe itself gives no time. Test with a skewer. Unmould at once, or the surface steams and turns gluey. Serve hot with hard sauce, a lemon or brandy sauce, or plain cream.
The joke in the last two sentences is the point of the entry. A "duff" was the sailor's and labourer's boiled dough pudding, plain flour and fat tied in a cloth and dropped in the pot, and Jack Cade is Shakespeare's rebel leader in Henry VI Part 2 — a byword for the low-born mob. The author's conceit is that by the simple addition of spice the humblest pudding in the kitchen climbs the social ladder until it is a poor relation of plum pudding, the grandest boiled pudding of the English-speaking table. That progression from plain to spiced to fruited is broadly how boiled puddings seem to have been organised in Victorian cookery: one dough, one cloth, one pot, and a graded series of additions. If the book belongs, as is often suggested, among the trade manuals of Jessup Whitehead, who wrote for hotel and restaurant cooks in the American Midwest, then it fits a habit of teaching by variation — establish the plain version, then show how far a teaspoonful of something will carry it. Boiled puddings suited that world because they needed no oven space, only a stockpot already on the range.