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To Make a Dandy Pudding
Miss Brokovski.
One pound of flour, half a pound of currants, half a pound of suet, four ounces of treacle, a little nutmeg; mix it well together with milk, and boil it four hours.
A plain boiled suet pudding of the cheapest sort: flour, fat, dried fruit and a little sweetening, tied in a cloth and left to look after itself. The proportions are workable as written, but the method assumes equipment and habits that have largely gone.
- Treacle means molassesFour ounces of treacle is about 1/3 cup of dark molasses or, closer still, British black treacle. Golden syrup is not the same thing and will give a paler, sweeter pudding with none of the slight bitterness intended.
- SuetUse shredded beef suet, about 8 oz, or the packaged shredded suet sold for puddings. Fresh suet from a butcher must be stripped of membrane and grated while cold. Butter can be substituted at the same weight if frozen and grated, though the crumb will be shorter and less springy.
- No raising agentThe original relies on nothing but steam and the suet for lift, so expect a dense, close pudding rather than a light one. Adding a teaspoon of baking powder, or replacing some of the flour with breadcrumb, would lighten it; that is a departure from this text, not a correction of it.
- Milk quantity is left to judgement"Mix it well together with milk" gives no measure. Aim for a stiff dropping consistency that holds its shape on the spoon; add the milk gradually and go by the feel of the mixture rather than a fixed volume.
- Boiling versus steamingThe traditional method is a floured, scalded pudding cloth tied loosely to allow swelling, lowered into fast-boiling water and kept covered by water the whole time. A greased basin of at least three pints, covered with pleated parchment and foil, steamed in a covered pan, is far easier to manage and gives a very similar result. Top up with boiling water, never cold.
- Four hours is not an exaggerationA pudding this dense genuinely needs the time; short-cooking leaves a raw, pasty centre. If you steam it in a basin rather than a cloth, four hours still applies. It is done when a skewer comes out clean and the pudding has pulled slightly from the sides.
- CurrantsDried currants, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Half a pound is about 1 1/2 cups; rinse and dry them, and toss in a little of the flour so they do not sink.
- Yield and servingServes six to eight, hot, with custard, cream or a hard sauce. Leftovers slice well cold and fry in butter, a common way of using up a boiled pudding.
Boiled suet puddings tied in a cloth were a mainstay of nineteenth-century English cooking: one pot, one fire, cheap fat and flour bulked out with whatever dried fruit the household could afford. What "dandy" means here is not recorded; it may simply carry the sense of smart or fine, but the name cannot be tied to any one fixed formula. Treacle, the dark by-product of sugar refining, was the sweetener for cooks who could not spare refined sugar, and its presence marks this as a family pudding rather than a company one. The Home Cook Book was compiled from contributions by named local women, which is why this appears over Miss Brokovski's name; the shorthand quantities and the absence of a pan size, a water level or a serving suggestion were no obstacle to readers who already knew how a pudding cloth worked.