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Fig Pudding
Mrs. John Morse.
Half pound suet, one pound figs, chopped; one pound bread crumbs, half pound sugar, one egg, one nutmeg, half teaspoonful of baking soda; grease the tin mould well; boil three hours tied in a cloth; it requires milk enough to moisten it, one cup of flour; to be eaten with wine sauce,
A steamed suet pudding of the standard Victorian type, with figs standing in for the more usual raisins. The ingredient list runs out of order — the flour and milk arrive after the cooking instruction — so read the whole thing through before you start.
- SuetBeef suet, the hard fat from around the kidneys, is what gives these puddings their texture; it melts at a higher temperature than butter so the crumb sets around the pockets it leaves. Ask a butcher for fresh suet and grate it frozen, or use packaged shredded suet. Half a pound is about 225 g.
- The milk is the cook's judgement"Milk enough to moisten it" is genuinely unquantified, and with a pound of dry bread crumbs it matters. Aim for a batter that drops heavily from the spoon rather than pours, and add the milk gradually.
- Bread crumbs, not packaged crumbsA pound of crumbs here means soft crumbs torn or grated from stale white bread, roughly 8 cups loosely packed. Dry commercial crumbs will absorb far more milk and give a dense, sandy pudding.
- The soda does littleHalf a teaspoon of baking soda has little acid to work with here beyond what the figs and milk supply, so expect modest lift at best. If you want more, baking powder is the modern equivalent; either way this pudding is meant to be close-textured, not cakey.
- Mould and cloth"Tied in a cloth" means the greased tin mould is covered with a pleated, floured cloth tied under the rim to keep condensation out. A sheet of parchment and foil tied with string does the same job. Fill the mould no more than two-thirds.
- Boiling, properly steamingStand the mould on a trivet or folded cloth in a deep pot, add boiling water to come halfway up, cover, and keep it at a bare simmer for three hours. Check the water hourly and top up with boiling water — a pot that boils dry will scorch the pudding and ruin the mould.
- NutmegOne whole nutmeg, grated, is about 2 to 3 teaspoons — assertive by current taste. Half that is closer to what most cooks would want now.
- Wine sauceThe period sauce is butter, sugar and sherry or madeira beaten warm, sometimes thickened with a little flour or an egg yolk. Serve it hot over the turned-out pudding.
- YieldEnough for 8 to 10 as written. It reheats well by steaming for 30 minutes, and keeps several days wrapped and refrigerated.
Dried figs were a familiar import in American kitchens, sold pressed into blocks or strung in rings, and they turn up alongside raisins and currants in the boiled puddings that closed a formal dinner. The form itself is English and much older: suet, crumbs, sugar, spice and fruit bound with egg and boiled for hours in a cloth, a method that predates reliable home ovens and survived long after them because it needed only a pot of water and a fire that could be left alone. The Home Cook Book gathered its contents from named contributors — Mrs. John Morse here — as a fundraising compilation, which is why the measurements assume a cook who already knows what a pudding batter should look like.