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English Plum Pudding II
6 ozs. flour 6 ozs. stale bread crumbs ¾ lb. raisins, seeded and cut in pieces ¾ lb. currants ¾ lb. suet, finely chopped 10 ozs. sugar 1 cup molasses 3 ozs. candied orange peel, finely cut 1 teaspoon grated nutmeg 1 teaspoon mace 6 eggs, well beaten 2 teaspoons salt Mix ingredients in order given, turn into a thickly floured square of unbleached cotton cloth. Tie securely, leaving some space to allow the pudding to swell, and plunge into a kettle of boiling water. Cook five hours, allowing pudding to be immersed in water during the entire cooking. Serve with Hard and Liquid Sauce.
Hard Sauce. Cream one-third cup butter; add gradually one cup brown sugar and two tablespoons brandy, drop by drop. Force through a pastry bag with rose tube, and garnish with green leaves and candied cherries.
Liquid Sauce. Mix one-half cup sugar, one-half table- 405 spoon corn-starch, and a few grains salt. Add gradually, while stirring constantly, one cup boiling water, and boil five minutes. Remove from fire, add one tablespoon lemon juice and two tablespoons brandy; then color with fruit red. ¾ cups sugar 1/4 cup water
A boiled suet pudding of the old school: no flour beyond what dusts the cloth, so the crumbs and eggs do all the binding. The cloth technique is the whole recipe, and it is where most modern attempts fail.
- The clothScald a square of unbleached cotton or a large square of muslin in boiling water, wring it out, and then flour it heavily on the damp side. A wet, thickly floured cloth forms a skin that keeps water out; a dry one lets the pudding waterlog. Tie with kitchen string and leave a generous inch of slack for swelling.
- WeightsThe fruit and suet are three-quarters of a pound each. Six ounces of crumbs is roughly three cups loosely packed; ten ounces of sugar is about one and a quarter cups. Two teaspoons of salt reads high to modern taste and can be cut to one without harm.
- SuetBeef suet from a butcher, chilled and grated or chopped fine, gives the proper texture. Packaged shredded suet works. Butter is a poorer substitute here because it melts too early and the pudding goes dense.
- CurrantsThese are dried Zante currants, a small dried grape, not fresh red or black currants. Rinse and dry them if they are dusty, and check for stems.
- BoilingUse a kettle deep enough that the pudding floats clear of the bottom, or set it on a rack or an inverted plate. Keep it at a steady simmer and top up with boiling water, never cold, so the pudding stays submerged for the full five hours.
- Doneness and yieldFive hours is not padding: the pudding should come out dark and firm, its surface dried by the floured cloth. A pudding this size will serve roughly ten to twelve. Wrapped and kept cold it will hold for some time, and it can be reheated by steaming for about an hour.
- Hard sauceThe butter and sugar must be at cool room temperature or the brandy will split the cream. Adding it drop by drop, as written, is the safeguard. Pipe it and chill it firm before serving against the hot pudding.
- Liquid sauce and coloring"Fruit red" is a period commercial food colouring; a drop of modern red food colouring does the same job, or omit it entirely. The sauce thickens as the starch cooks out over the five-minute boil, so do not stop short or it stays watery.
Boiled plum pudding took its name from "plum" as a term for raisins and dried fruit, an extension of the older sense of the word; there is no plum in it. The cloth-boiled form is generally traced to seventeenth-century England, where a pudding cloth freed cooks from stuffing the mixture into an animal's stomach or gut and made the round, cannonball pudding of Victorian Christmas illustration possible. That the Boston cooking school printed two versions says something about how thoroughly the American Christmas table had adopted an English dish: the suet, currants and candied peel are unchanged, while the cup of molasses looks like a New England substitution for treacle, though English recipes of the period varied in whether they used treacle at all.