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Scotch Plum Pudding
Chop up half a pound of beef suet, with half a pound of raisins and place them in a basin, mix in half a pound of caster-sugar, four ounces of breadcrumbs, two ounces of thinly-shredded candied peel and a pound of marmalade; beat five eggs thoroughly and stir them into this mixture, making the whole smooth; turn this into a buttered basin, tie a floured cloth over it and boil for five hours. Make a sauce as follows: Blanch and pound a couple of ounces of sweet almonds moistening them frequently with a little rose water to prevent their oiling, warm two ounces of butter with two heaped tablespoonfuls of sugar, and beat it until creamy, then beat in the pounded almonds, and a wineglassful of pale brandy. When done, turn it onto a hot dish, and serve with the cold sauce.
A steamed suet pudding built on marmalade rather than the usual flour and spice, served with an almond hard sauce. Nothing here is difficult, but the vessel, the water level and the sauce texture all repay attention.
- Keep the water goingFive hours of "boiling" means a covered pot at a bare simmer with the basin sitting on a trivet or folded cloth, water halfway up its sides. Top up with boiling water as it evaporates; if the pot runs dry the basin cracks and the pudding scorches.
- The basin and the clothAn English pudding basin of about 1.5 quarts, well buttered, is the right size for this quantity. The floured cloth is the period cover; a pleated round of parchment under a pleated round of foil, tied under the rim with string, does the same job and keeps steam out.
- Caster sugarSuperfine sugar. Granulated works, since it dissolves over five hours, but superfine gives a smoother batter when you beat in the eggs.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys, sold shredded and floured in Britain and available frozen or from a butcher elsewhere. Chop or grate it very fine — lumps leave hollows. Vegetable suet substitutes directly if that is what you can get.
- A pound of marmaladeThis is the whole flavour and most of the liquid; there is no flour and no added spice. Use a bitter Seville orange marmalade with real peel, not a sweet jelly-style preserve, or the pudding turns cloying.
- BreadcrumbsCrumbs from stale white bread, not the sandy commercial kind and not panko. Four ounces is roughly two cups if the crumbs are soft and loosely packed, nearer one cup if they are fine and dry.
- The almond sauceThis is a hard sauce, served cold against the hot pudding. Grinding blanched almonds releases oil and the paste splits; the rose water keeps it workable, and a food processor pulsed in short bursts does the same. Beat the butter and sugar pale first, then work in the almonds and brandy a little at a time so the sauce does not curdle.
- A wineglassfulIn cookbooks of this period, about 2 fluid ounces — a quarter cup.
- Yield and keepingServes eight to ten. It can be made ahead, wrapped and refrigerated, then re-steamed for about an hour to serve.
"Plum" in a British pudding name has meant raisins and other dried fruit, not plums, since the seventeenth century, and by the Victorian era a plum pudding was understood as the boiled suet-and-dried-fruit pudding of Christmas. This version departs from the English pattern in using a full pound of marmalade and no flour, spice or treacle at all. Orange marmalade was strongly associated with Scotland by the nineteenth century — the Dundee trade is the usual reference point, though the tradition of boiling bitter Seville oranges into a stiff preserve is older and more widespread. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, drew this book from the hotel's kitchens in the 1890s, when a grand New York dining room was expected to produce a wide repertoire of British and Continental hotel cookery on request, regional variants included.