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English Boiled Plum Pudding

3 pounds of flour. 2 pounds of chopped suet. 2 pounds of seedless raisins. 1 1/2 pounds of currants. 1 pound of citron. 2 ounces of mixed ground spices--cinnamon, mace, nutmeg and cloves.

Mix all the above dry articles together in a pan. Then mix the following fluids: 1 1/2 pints of milk. 1/2 cup of black molasses, large measure. 8 eggs. 1 pound of common yellow sugar. 1/2 pint of brandy. 1 teaspoonful of salt. Then stir both mixtures together. This should be prepared over night, and next morning tied up in four or five pudding cloths and boiled without intermission six hours.

Some persons have hardly a speck of reverence for the antique, and had as lief add something to the time-honored English plum pudding as not, if they find it makes it lighter, more enjoyable and more digestible. Such people can add to the preceding receipts two pounds or less of fine white bread crumbs, and to the fluid part a half pint more milk. That is all, but it makes a difference. The quantity of pudding prescribed is enough for 100 to 150 persons--that is to say, of persons having hotel dinners to eat besides. The addition of molasses to the preceding, and other puddings to come, is for the purpose of giving with the spices a dark color, but when refined syrups only can be had burnt sugar must be added for coloring. Not only cooks but many others like-wise ought to feel grateful to Count Albufage Caramel, of Nismes, who invented caramel. It is used for giving a brown color to an immense number of eatable and drinkable articles, and is not only harmless, but gives an agreeable flavor in some cases, as in creams. Put some sugar in a frying pan over the fire, let it burn darker than browned coffee, then fill up the pan with water, boil and strain.

But there is another plum pudding, called in French bills-of fare pouding a l' Allemande, which all who practice it will prefer to make nine times to the preceding kind once. It contains no flour, and can be boiled in half the time of Christmas pudding.