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Delicious Fruit Pudding
831. Mix two and a half pounds of red currants and raspberries with one and a quarter pound of raw sugar, then fill a pudding-dish with sliced bread (without crust), and layers of the fruit alternately, leaving a thick layer of the fruit at the top. Bake it in the bachelor's oven for nearly an hour before it is served, and serve it in the same dish, which may be improved in appearance by a knitted cover tied over the edges.
RICE AND FRUIT (baked). 832. Wash a sufficient quantity of rice; put a little water to it, and set it in the oven till it is absorbed; then put in a little milk, work it well with a spoon, set it in the oven again, and keep working it from time to time till it is sufficiently soft. A little cream worked in it at the last is an improvement. Fill a pie-dish nearly full of fruit, sweeten it, and lay on the rice unevenly by spoonsful. Bake it till the rice is of a light brown colour.
A summer pudding baked rather than pressed cold: bread layered with sweetened red currants and raspberries until the fruit juice soaks through. The proportions are generous by modern standards and scale down cleanly.
- Quantities2½ lb fruit is roughly 1.1 kg, and 1¼ lb sugar about 560 g — a 2:1 fruit-to-sugar ratio that suits very sharp red currants. With today's sweeter cultivated raspberries, half that sugar is usually enough.
- Raw sugarUnrefined or partly refined cane sugar, closer to a light brown demerara than to white. Demerara or light muscovado gives the intended slightly molasses note; white sugar works but tastes flatter.
- The bachelor's ovenA small portable oven set before an open fire, used where there was no range. The recipe gives no temperature; treat it as a moderate oven for the hour stated.
- The breadCrustless slices of a firm, close-crumbed white loaf, slightly stale, absorb juice without collapsing into paste. Modern soft sandwich bread turns to sludge; a day-old tin loaf or brioche-free plain white is better.
- LayeringKeeping a thick layer of fruit on top is the point of the dish — it is what colours and moistens the whole pudding as the juice runs down. Do not finish with bread or the surface bakes dry.
- ServingIt is meant to go to the table in its baking dish; the "knitted cover" tied over the edges is decorative, as the recipe says. Serve warm with cream or custard.
- YieldAs written this fills a large deep pudding-dish. Currants and raspberries both freeze well, though thawed fruit releases more liquid.