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Plum Pudding
(1). Beat up a dozen eggs and mix with them a pint and a half of cream, three-quarters of a pound each of sifted breadcrumbs and flour. When well beaten together, mix in a pound and a half each of very finely-chopped suet, sugar, stoned and chopped raisins and well-washed and dried currants, together with three ounces of candied citron and a similar amount of orange-peel cut very fine. Grate in one and a half nutmegs, and mix well six teaspoonfuls of brandy and a like quantity of white wine; tie the pudding tightly in a greased cloth, plunge it into boiling water and boil continually for nine hours. (2). Incorporate one pound of flour and half that quantity of shredded beef-suet in a basin, adding a quarter of a pound of breadcrumbs, a little grated nutmeg and ginger to flavor, one pound of stoned raisins, and form the whole into a thick paste, by adding a couple of teaspoonfuls of treacle and two breakfast cupfuls of milk. Turn this preparation into a cloth or basin, place in a stewpan of water, and boil for four hours, when it should be done; turn it out and serve.
Two puddings are given: the first a rich Waldorf version, the second a plain suet-and-raisin pudding of the English domestic sort. Both are boiled, not baked, and both are far larger than a modern household expects.
- Yield, and why you should halve itRecipe (1) totals roughly ten to twelve pounds of batter — enough for two large basins serving twenty or more. Halving or quartering it is sensible; the ratios hold at any scale.
- The pudding clothA floured, greased cloth is the older method and it works, but it must be tied tight enough that no water enters and loose enough to allow swelling. A buttered 2-quart pudding basin covered with pleated parchment and foil, then tied with string, is easier to manage and gives the same result.
- Nine hours of boilingThis is not an exaggeration for a pudding of that mass, but the pot must never go off the boil and must be topped up with boiling water so the pudding stays submerged. If it drops below, the batter cools and the centre stays raw. Set a lid or a trivet under the pudding so the cloth does not scorch on the pan bottom.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys, sold shredded in Britain and by request from a butcher elsewhere. Freeze it and grate it, or use packaged shredded suet. Ordinary butter or shortening will not give the same open, moist crumb.
- TreacleIn recipe (2), treacle means dark cane syrup — unsulphured molasses is the closest widely available equivalent, and golden syrup if you want it milder.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup ran larger than a teacup, generally 8 to 10 fluid ounces. Two of them means roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups of milk; add it gradually and stop when the paste is thick but droppable.
- The brandy and wineSix teaspoonfuls each is very little liquor for this much batter — roughly two ounces total in a ten-pound pudding. It is a flavouring, not a preservative. If you want a pudding that keeps and matures, plan to feed it with brandy after cooking rather than adding more to the raw mix, which slackens it.
- Currants and citronZante currants are small dried grapes, not fresh currants. Candied citron and candied orange peel are both still sold at holiday time; chop them fine, as the recipe says, or they sink.
- Serving and reheatingThe rich pudding (1) is the better keeper and can be rested before serving; recipe (2) is directed to be turned out and served at once. To reheat a kept pudding, steam or boil for one to two hours, and serve hot with hard sauce or a brandy sauce. If flaming, warm the spirit first and pour it over the turned-out pudding.
Boiled plum pudding descends from the older plum pottage, a thickened broth of meat stock, dried fruit, spices and breadcrumbs; "plum" simply meant raisin, and no plums have been involved for centuries. The pudding cloth, generally credited with turning the pottage into a solid mass, comes into English cookery in the seventeenth century, and by the Victorian period the boiled fruit pudding was firmly attached to Christmas. That Oscar Tschirky included it in a book of Waldorf kitchen practice at the end of the nineteenth century says something about the hotel's clientele: an American luxury dining room was expected to produce the English holiday canon on demand. The two versions here show the range: one built on twelve eggs and a pint and a half of cream for the dining room, one on milk, flour and treacle for anybody's kitchen.