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Plum Pudding
(A Two-Guinea prize recipe.) Seed and chop 1 pound raisins, add 1 pound of chopped suet, 3/4 pound stale bread-crumbs, 1/4 pound brown sugar, grated rind of a lemon, 1/4 pound flour, 1 pound currants, and 1 ounce grated nutmeg, 5 eggs, 1/2 pint brandy, and 1/2 pound chopped candied peel. Beat the eggs and add the brandy, mix all the rest, well, cook in 3-pound greased moulds, for 6 hours. Cook 6 hours longer at the time of using, and serve with wine sauce.
A classic boiled Christmas pudding, made in the old proportions: equal weights of raisins, currants and suet, bound with breadcrumbs rather than mostly flour. Two points need attention before you start — the nutmeg quantity and the fact that the recipe assumes you already own pudding moulds.
- The nutmeg is a misprint or a very old palateOne ounce of grated nutmeg is roughly four to five whole nutmegs, far more than a modern palate expects in a batch of this size. Present-day recipes for a pudding of this size generally call for no more than a whole grated nutmeg, well under half an ounce.
- "3-pound moulds" means capacity, not one mouldThe mixture weighs close to six pounds, so it fills two 3-lb basins, or three 2-lb ones. Grease them, leave an inch of headroom, and cover with pleated greased paper and foil tied under the rim.
- Cook means steam or boilVictorian and Edwardian puddings of this type were boiled in a floured cloth or steamed in a covered basin standing in a pan of simmering water. Keep the water at a bare simmer and topped up; if it boils dry the basin cracks and the pudding scorches.
- SuetFresh beef suet from a butcher, chopped fine, is what the recipe means. Packaged shredded suet works and needs no preparation; vegetable suet is a straight substitute by weight, though the flavour is flatter.
- Seed and chop the raisinsRaisins then were often muscatels with seeds. Modern seedless raisins need only a rough chop, or none at all if you prefer the fruit whole.
- Candied peelHalf a pound of good citron, orange and lemon peel bought in the piece and chopped yourself. The pre-diced supermarket kind is sweeter and softer and will disappear into the pudding.
- The second six hours is not optional paddingThe first long cooking sets the pudding, and the second cooking on the day heats it right through and softens it for serving. Six hours is generous — two to three hours of steaming is usually enough to heat a 3-lb pudding through, though the extra time does no harm.
- KeepingA pudding this rich in brandy and sugar keeps for months in a cool, dry place. Re-cover with fresh paper after the first cooking, and feed with a spoonful of brandy every few weeks if you like.
- Yield and sauceEach 3-lb pudding serves eight to ten, in small portions. Wine sauce here means a sweetened sauce of butter, sugar and sherry or madeira, either thickened with a little flour or beaten warm over hot water.
Plum pudding carries a name that outlived its meaning: "plums" were dried fruit generally, raisins and currants above all, a usage that survives in plum cake and plum duff. Its ancestor is generally traced to the medieval and early modern pottages of meat, fruit and spice thickened with breadcrumbs, which gradually shed the meat and kept the suet, until by the mid-nineteenth century a spherical boiled pudding doused in brandy was fixed as the emblem of an English Christmas. The note that this was a two-guinea prize recipe places it in the world of magazine competitions, where readers submitted household recipes for cash prizes — a reminder that a good plum pudding formula was a piece of family property worth sending in. The proportions here, a pound each of raisins and currants against only a quarter pound of flour, mark it as a rich pudding of the old school, held together largely by fruit, suet and egg.