The American Pastry Cook

Jessup Whitehead's American Pastry Cook — the hotel pastry trade's own manual, in hundreds of numbered recipes.

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German Plum Pudding

2 pounds of white bread crumbs. 1 pound of white sugar. 1 pound of chopped suet. 1 pound of raisins. 1 pound of currants. 1 pint of milk. 7 eggs. 1 teaspoonful of mixed ground spices--cinnamon, nutmeg and mace. 1/2 cup of brandy. Salt. Pinch of soda.

Mix the dry articles together--the bread crumbs being grated or chopped quite fine--then wet with the milk, eggs and brandy, the salt and soda dissolved in them; tie in four pudding cloths and boil four hours. Either of the plum puddings can be boiled or steamed in fancy moulds, to be sent to table whole.

In deference to the temperance principles of some of their guests, the best hotels make it a rule to prepare two sauces for plum pudding, one being with-out spirit, the other the customary brandy sauce, set on fire just as the dish is sent in, or else the equally approved sauce sabayon. Another one of those revered patriarchs whom it were almost sacrilege to touch is Burn's, with "honest sonsie face," the haggis. In the English plum pudding, however, there is a grim, unmistakable identity that is very satisfying as compared with the shadowy indefiniteness of the Scottish chief. It is a pity that one of the last minstrels, if only one of humble rank, did not fix unchangeably in verse the component parts of the national haggis, as some one has done the "Eve's pudding," and Sydney Smith did for his salad, and another did for mulled wine. We have a compound called haggis, without the preceding article, composed of meat, chopped anchovies, eggs, bread, sour wine, pepper and salt. But that does not seem to correspond with the remarks of an editor of Burns, who says the haggis was to Scotland what the plum pudding is to England, and it was the pride of her people that all the ingredients and even the bag it was boiled in were of native production.

It was either the Edinburgh Magazine or Chamber's Miscellany that published the following receipt, used on anniversary occasions in the best Edinburgh hotels and said to have been contributed by a Fifeshire landlady, who observed, however, that the rich made the haggis as good as they liked but the poor as good as they had means. We will not be too presumptious, but call this a haggis. The haggis may yet exist, "great chieftain of the pudding race," but in his makeup he will be found like a highland costume, not successfully transplantable.

A Scotch Haggis.

A kind of mince pudding, of the boiled plum pudding order, made with a large proportion of meat.

A calf's heart and tongue--2 1/2 pounds. 1 pound of chopped suet. 1 pound of flour. 1 pound of bread soaked in 1 pint of milk. 1 pound of chopped apples, or raisins. 1 pound of white meat of chicken. 6 eggs. Salt to season. 1/2 pint of home-made currant wine. 1 tablespoonful of mixed ground spices. Cook the heart and tongue half-done, then mince quite fine. Cut the breast of chicken in thin strips. Mix all the ingredients well together, the dry articles first. Tie up in two pudding cloths and boil 4 hours. Butter, sugar, and half cup of vinegar, all made hot and beaten together, for sauce.

The great majority of all the best puddings made are of bread, either wholly or in part. The next is a good every day sort.

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