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English Plum Pudding
M. Walker.
One pound raisins (stoned), one pound of currants, one pound suet very finely chopped, one pound flour, seven eggs, two wineglasses brandy, three of sweet wine, sugar and spice to taste, (it may require a little sweet milk); tie it tightly in a well floured cloth, which should be first dipped in hot water, and boil four hours, or it may be boiled in a pudding form.
A classic boiled suet pudding written for cooks who already knew the method — the recipe assumes you can judge batter consistency and manage a cloth. A few of its instructions need translating, and one of its timings is optimistic.
- WineglassA wineglass in this period is about 2 fl oz. Two glasses of brandy is roughly 1/4 cup; three of sweet wine about 1/2 cup — a sherry, madeira or sweet marsala fits "sweet wine" here.
- Sugar and spice to tasteThe recipe leaves both open. For this quantity of fruit, something like 8 oz (about 1 cup) of dark brown sugar and roughly a tablespoon total of mixed spice — nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, a little clove and ginger — would not be out of keeping with other puddings of the period. Add the milk only until the batter drops reluctantly from the spoon; a wet pudding boils heavy.
- SuetThis means raw beef kidney fat, chopped fine or grated while cold, not rendered tallow. Ask a butcher, or use packaged shredded suet (including vegetarian versions), which is drier and needs no chopping.
- Four hours is shortThe ingredients alone come to some 4 to 5 lb before liquid. Four hours is at the low end; six to eight hours of steady boiling or steaming is what many period recipes give for a pudding of this bulk, and longer does no harm. The pudding is done when a skewer comes out clean and hot.
- The clothScald the cloth, wring it out, and flour the inside heavily while damp; the flour forms the skin that keeps water out. Tie with a little slack for expansion, and rest the bundle on an inverted plate or trivet so it never touches the pan bottom.
- Keep the water boilingThis is the hinge. The water must stay at a full boil the whole time and must be topped up only with boiling water from a kettle. A pan that goes off the boil, or a splash of cold water, gives a sodden layer that no further cooking repairs.
- Pudding formThe "pudding form" is a basin or mould. Grease it, cover with pleated parchment and foil tied down, and steam rather than submerge; allow at least as long as for the cloth, and probably somewhat longer.
- Yield and keepingServes 12 to 16. Puddings of this type were made weeks ahead: cool completely, re-wrap dry, and store cool, then steam an hour or two to reheat. Serve with hard sauce, brandy butter or a warm custard.
"Plum" here means raisin — before dried plums stopped being the usual fruit, and the dish is generally traced to plum pottage or plum porridge, documented chiefly from the seventeenth century, a spiced meat-and-fruit broth thickened with breadcrumbs that stiffened over the centuries into a boiled suet pudding. By the 1870s it was widely established as a Christmas dish in the English-speaking world, and the pudding cloth, the long boil and the brandy were as much ritual as technique. Its appearance in The Home Cook Book — compiled in Toronto in 1877 by "ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada" and generally credited as the first Canadian community fundraising cookbook — shows how thoroughly English domestic cooking travelled: the recipe is signed by a contributor, M. Walker, and reproduced with the brevity of something every reader was expected to have made before.