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Madeira Pudding
Mrs. J. C. Smith.
One-half pound chopped suet, three-quarters of a pound bread crumbs, six ounces moist sugar, one-quarter pound flour, two eggs, two wineglasses of sherry; mix the suet, bread crumbs, sugar, and flour well together. When these ingredients are well mixed, add the eggs and two glasses of sherry, to make a thick batter; boil three hours and a half; serve with wine sauce.
A plain Victorian boiled suet pudding, stiffer and less fruited than a Christmas pudding. Nothing here is difficult, but the measures and the vessel need translating.
- WineglassA wineglass in nineteenth-century cookery books is about 2 fluid ounces (1/4 cup), not a modern stemmed glass. Two of them is roughly half a cup of sherry in total.
- Moist sugarThis is unrefined or partly refined sugar still carrying molasses — closest today to light brown sugar. Six ounces is about 3/4 cup packed.
- SuetBeef suet, the hard fat from around the kidneys, shredded or grated fine. Packaged shredded suet is sold in some markets; otherwise ask a butcher and grate it cold, or freeze it briefly first so it shreds rather than smears.
- Bread crumbsThree-quarters of a pound means soft crumbs from stale white bread, not dried commercial crumbs, which would absorb far more liquid and give a heavy, sandy pudding. Reckon roughly 6 cups of fresh crumbs.
- How it is boiledPack the mixture into a greased pudding basin, cover with pleated parchment and foil (or a floured cloth) tied under the rim, and set it on a trivet in a pan of simmering water reaching halfway up. Keep the water at a bare simmer and top it up with boiling water so it never runs dry.
- Three and a half hoursThat is genuine for a pudding of this size; a suet batter needs long, gentle heat for the fat to melt through the crumbs. It will hold well if kept warm, and reheats by steaming for another 30-40 minutes.
- Wine sauceA common period wine sauce is butter, sugar and sherry warmed together until smooth, sometimes thickened with a little egg yolk or cornstarch. Serve it hot and pour it over at the table.
- YieldThe ingredients come to something over two pounds of pudding — eight modest servings. It is rich.
Boiled suet puddings were the backbone of English and Anglo-American dessert cookery for two centuries, and this one belongs to the lighter, more genteel end of the family: no dried fruit, no spice, just crumbs, fat, sugar and a good deal of wine. The name is a puzzle in the usual Victorian way, since the recipe calls for sherry rather than Madeira; the received explanation, often repeated but not well documented, is that Madeira cake took its name from the wine it was meant to be served with rather than from any wine in the batter — Madeira cake itself famously contains none. The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) was compiled from contributions by named local women — Mrs. J. C. Smith here — and sold to raise money for the Hospital for Sick Children, which is why so many of its entries read like a hostess's private shorthand rather than a professional's instructions: the writer assumes you own a pudding basin, know how to tie a cloth, and can keep a pot simmering all afternoon.