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Snowdon Pudding
879. Mix together a breakfast-cupful each of chopped suet, crumbs of bread, and sifted sugar; add two eggs and a glass of wine, and the juice and rind of a lemon. Line the basin or mould with raisins, and boil it five hours. 880. A Richer Snowdon Pudding. -Take half a pound of bread crumbs, two ounces of sago, half a pound of suet chopped very fine, six eggs, half a glass of brandy, six ounces of orange or lemon marmalade, six ounces of moist sugar. Mix all well together, butter a mould, and ornament with swelled raisins; boil for one hour, and serve with marmalade sauce.
Two versions of the same Welsh steamed pudding: a plain one bound with breadcrumbs and a richer one stiffened with sago and sweetened with marmalade. Both depend on a well-sealed mould and water that never goes off the boil.
- The hinge: keep the water at a steady simmer and topped upA suet pudding that is allowed to stop boiling, even briefly, sinks and turns close-textured. Have a kettle of boiling water beside the pan and top up from it, never with cold water, keeping the level at two-thirds up the mould.
- Breakfast-cupfulA breakfast cup is roughly 8 to 10 fl oz. Treat it as one standard cup of each: about 4 oz chopped suet, about 2 oz fresh breadcrumbs (nearer 3 oz if the crumbs are dry), 7 oz sifted sugar. The volumes are what matters here, not exact weights.
- A glass of wineA Victorian wine glass is about 2 fl oz, not a modern 6 oz pour. Sherry or Madeira suits the first pudding; the second calls for half that quantity of brandy.
- SuetShredded beef suet from a butcher, chopped fine and kept cold, gives the open crumb the recipe expects. Packet vegetable suet works and needs no chopping; butter does not substitute well, as it melts before the crumbs have set.
- Sago and moist sugarSago means small pearl sago; soak the two ounces in a little milk or water for half an hour so it does not stay gritty. Moist sugar is light brown soft sugar.
- Swelled raisinsPlump the raisins in hot water or a spoonful of the wine for ten minutes, then press them onto a thickly buttered mould so they hold their pattern when turned out.
- Sealing and the five hoursCover the mould with buttered parchment and foil, pleated and tied under the rim. Five hours suggests a slack fire and a large basin; a crumb-and-egg mixture of this size should be cooked through in about two to two and a half hours of steady steaming. The richer pudding's one hour looks short for a single large mould, which will probably want nearer ninety minutes.
- Yield and sauceThe quantities differ, so judge the basin by the mixture; a 1.5-quart basin suits the richer pudding, and each will serve six or so. Marmalade sauce is simply orange marmalade warmed with a little water and lemon juice, sieved if you want it clear.
Snowdon pudding is generally traced to the Pen-y-Gwryd inn at the foot of Snowdon, where it is said to have been served to walkers and climbers, and the name is usually explained by the pale suet dome studded and streaked with raisins standing in for the mountain under snow — a tradition often repeated but not securely documented. It belongs to the older practice of boiling a suet mixture in a cloth or basin over the same fire that was cooking the rest of the meal.