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Plum Pudding
Put in a saucepan a cup of thin cream, add three heaping tablespoonfuls of sugar, and the grated yellow peel of a lemon. Stir the cream until the sugar is melted and the flavor of the lemon peel is infused through it. Rub to a fine crumb half a pound of soft stale bread. Set the bread crumbs in the cream for ten minutes. Cut into shreds and add a quarter of a pound of citron and one ounce of candied lemon peel. Add also a half pound of dried currants, a pound of stoned raisins, chopped fine; a quarter of a pound of butter softened and rubbed in with the other ingredients, and the same amount of beef's marrow melted and strained. Mix well all these ingredients, using the hands to knead them together; then add three eggs, one after the other, and finally a gill of madeira and a gill of the best brandy. Butter a two quart pudding mold; dredge it with sugar, and pack the pudding in it, and let it bake an hour and a half, then remove the cover and let it bake three-quarters of an hour longer. Set it in a pan of warm water when you put it in the oven to bake.
A bread-crumb plum pudding, baked in a water bath rather than steamed in a cloth, and notably free of both flour and spice. A few of its ingredients and measures need translating.
- Oven temperatureNone is given, which is normal for the period. A pudding of this kind wants a moderate oven, 325-350F; the water bath keeps the outside from setting hard before the centre cooks.
- A gillHalf a cup, so a cup of fortified wine and spirits in total. That is a substantial amount of alcohol for a two-quart mold, though a long bake drives off most of it; some survives, more so while the cover is on.
- Thin creamThe period term for a lighter cream than heavy or double cream; light (single) cream is the closest current equivalent, with half-and-half a serviceable substitute. Heavy cream will make the crumb dense and greasy.
- Beef marrowAsk a butcher for marrow bones and render the marrow gently, then strain out the solids. Shredded beef suet is the traditional substitute in English puddings; an extra quarter pound of butter works but gives a shorter, less silky texture.
- CitronCandied citron peel, still sold at Christmas and from baking suppliers. It is not lemon and not a citron fruit you will find fresh; do not substitute lemon peel for both quantities, as the recipe already calls for candied lemon separately.
- Stoned raisinsRaisins with the seeds removed, a job then done by hand or with a small raisin seeder. Any modern seedless raisin is already stoned; chop them fine as directed so they distribute rather than sink.
- Half a pound of stale breadAbout four to five cups of fine crumbs from a plain white loaf, day-old and dry enough to rub down without gumming. Fresh bread will not absorb the cream properly.
- The water bathSet the mold in warm water reaching halfway up its side and top the pan up as it evaporates. The lid stays on for the first hour and a half so the pudding steams, then comes off so the surface dries and colours.
- Yield and servingA two-quart mold serves ten to twelve; the pudding is rich enough that thin slices are the norm. It is traditionally sent to table with hard sauce or a brandy sauce, and keeps well wrapped and chilled for several days.
Plum pudding kept its name long after plums left it: by the seventeenth century "plums" meant raisins and other dried fruit generally, and over the following century the dish shifted from a spiced meat-and-fruit pottage toward a sweet, suet-bound pudding. What distinguishes this version is what it lacks. There is no flour, no nutmeg, no cinnamon, no cloves, no molasses, and no long steaming in a floured cloth. Instead the structure comes from bread crumbs soaked in lemon-scented cream, the richness from marrow and butter, the flavour from madeira and brandy alone. That combination places it closer to the older English bread puddings than to the black, spiced Christmas pudding. Beef marrow was still an everyday ingredient when this book appeared, valued for a moistness that butter alone cannot give. Its near-total disappearance from home cooking is part of what makes this recipe read as exotic now.