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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.
A hotel-scale boiled pudding: bread-crumb based rather than flour based, which gives it a lighter, more open crumb than the usual English Christmas pudding. The text runs on into an essay on haggis and a second receipt; the plum pudding is the recipe proper.
- The hinge: the cloths must be flouredA pudding boiled in cloth needs the cloth scalded, wrung out, then rubbed generously with flour on the inside face before filling. The flour sets into a skin in the first minutes of boiling and keeps water out; without it the outside of the pudding turns to paste.
- YieldThe mix comes to roughly eight pounds and is divided among four cloths, so each pudding is about two pounds and serves eight to ten. Halve or quarter the whole thing for a domestic batch.
- SuetBeef suet from a butcher, chopped or grated fine, is the original. Packaged shredded suet works; butter does not substitute cleanly here, since suet melts later and leaves the open texture the crumbs depend on.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, a small raisin, not fresh red or black currants. Both they and the raisins should be rinsed and picked over.
- "Pinch of soda"Baking soda. Older American books often call a comparable leavening saleratus, though that was not always the same compound. The recipe leaves the amount to the cook and clearly intends a very small one; too much will give a soapy taste and a grey cast to the crumb.
- Spice quantityOne teaspoon of mixed cinnamon, nutmeg and mace across some eight pounds of pudding is very restrained by modern taste. Two to three teaspoons suits present-day palates better, and freshly grated nutmeg makes the difference.
- BoilingFour hours at a steady simmer, fully submerged, with a plate or rack under the puddings so they do not sit on the pot floor. Keep a kettle going and top up with boiling water only; cold water stops the cooking and can make the pudding heavy.
- Steaming in mouldsIf you use the fancy moulds the text mentions, butter them well, fill two-thirds full, cover with pleated foil or paper tied down, and steam rather than boil. Allow at least the four hours, and longer for a deep mould, since steaming works more slowly than boiling.
- The saucesSauce sabayon is zabaglione: egg yolks, sugar and wine whisked over hot water until thick. The flamed brandy sauce is the alcoholic option; the hotel practice of offering both alongside is worth keeping.
"Plum" in plum pudding is generally said to have meant raisins from an early date, long after actual plums dropped out of the mixture, and by the time this book was written the boiled suet pudding was fixed as the emblem of an English Christmas. What distinguishes this version is the base: two pounds of grated bread crumbs in place of the flour or the flour-and-crumb mix of the English article. The digression that follows is the author's own: Burns's "Address to a Haggis," with its "honest, sonsie face" and "great chieftain o' the puddin-race," dates from 1786, and the notion that haggis stood to Scotland as plum pudding to England was a commonplace of Victorian writing. The receipt he prints under that name, with chicken breast, apples and currant wine, is a hotel banquet dish rather than anything a Fifeshire kitchen would recognise, and he says as much himself.