Christmas Pudding
A classic Victorian boiled Christmas pudding with lots of fruit
City/Region: England
Time Period: 1845
In 1644, the Puritan-led English Parliament banned Christmas celebrations, including rich foods and alcohol as embodied in the Christmas pudding. This act was abolished in 1660, but it took centuries for Christmas to regain its former glory. By the time Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843 and Eliza Acton wrote Modern Cookery for Private Families in 1845, Christmas pudding was on the menu again.
This boiled pudding is very rich with lots of raisin flavor coming through. If you don’t want to fuss with a pudding cloth, and it is fussy, feel free to use a pudding basin. You can also pour brandy over the pudding every few days as it ages, but I just poured some on before I served it so that I could light it on fire.
You could make the historical punch sauce below, or serve the pudding forth with a nice custard.
“The Author’s Christmas Pudding.
To three ounces of flour, and the same weight of fine, lightly-grated bread-crumbs, add six of beef kidney-suet, chopped small, six of raisins weighed after they are stoned, six of well-cleaned currants, four ounces of minced apples, five of sugar, two of candied orange-rind, half a teaspoonful of nutmeg mixed with pounded mace, a very little salt, a small glass of brandy, and three whole eggs. Mix and beat these ingredients well together, tie them tightly in a thickly floured cloth, and boil them for three hours and a half. We can recommend this as a remarkably light small rich pudding: it may be served with German, wine, or punch sauce.
Punch sauce for Sweet Puddings
This may be served with custard, plain bread, and plum-puddings. With two ounces of sugar and a quarter of a pint of water, boil very gently the rind of half a small lemon, and somewhat less of orange-peel, from fifteen to twenty minutes; strain out the rinds, thicken the sauce with an ounce and a half of butter and nearly a teaspoonful of flour, add a half-glass of brandy, the same of white wine, two thirds of a glass of rum, with the juice of half an orange, and rather less of lemon-juice: serve the sauce very hot, but do not allow it to boil after the spirit is stirred in. ”
Ingredients:
- 3 oz (85 g) flour
- 3 oz (85 g) breadcrumbs
- 6 oz (170 g) beef suet*, or lard or shortening
- 6 oz (170 g) raisins
- 6 oz (170 g) currants
- 4 oz (113 g) minced apple
- 5 oz (142 g) brown sugar
- 2 oz (57 g) candied peel*
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, with a little mace* mixed in
- A pinch of salt
- 3 oz (88 ml) brandy
- 3 eggs
- Brandy, for setting on fire
- Punch sauce, optional, recipe above
*See notes below.
Instructions:
- Prepare the pudding cloth by boiling a piece of cotton or muslin for 20 minutes.
- While it boils, mix all the ingredients in a large bowl until well combined.
- After 20 minutes, take the cloth out of the water and lay it on a flat surface. It’s going to be hot, so use gloves and/or tongs. Grease the cloth with a bit of suet, lard, or butter. Sprinkle liberally with flour and rub it in. You can’t over-flour the cloth, so be generous.
- Line a medium bowl with the cloth, flour side up. Form the pudding mixture into a ball and place it in the cloth. Gather the cloth up tight and twist it so that there is no empty space around the pudding. Tie it as tight as possible with a piece of cloth or string.
- Put a pot of water on the stove with a small plate upside down on the bottom (this will keep the pudding from burning). Bring to a rolling boil.
- Once it’s boiling (and not before), give your pudding one last shaping. You’re going for a perfect cannonball shape. I didn’t quite get there, so do your best. Lower the pudding into the water and cover the pot. The water should be at least halfway up the pudding.
- Boil for 3 1/2 hours. Check on it regularly and add more boiling water if needed. You want to add boiling water because cooler water will lower the temperature of the pot (not good).
- After 3 1/2 hours, remove the pudding and set it in a bowl for a few minutes to let most of the water drain. Hang it to fully dry.
- Age the pudding in a cold, dry place. Since I live in Los Angeles and there are no cold places, I took mine out of the cloth after it had dried, put it in an airtight container, and stored it in the fridge for a few weeks.
- Rewrap your aged pudding and boil it for 1 hour.
- Pour some brandy over the pudding and carefully light it on fire. Be sure to have a pot or something else to snuff out the fire with (I let mine go too long and the fruit started to burn). Serve it forth alight with some punch sauce (written above) or some custard, if desired.
Notes
- Suet is the hard fat from around an animal’s kidneys and is used in a lot of baking. It’s really great, but can be hard to find in the US. You could use butter in this recipe, but it’s not quite the same.
- Mace comes from the outside of a nutmeg seed and tastes similar to nutmeg with notes of cinnamon and black pepper. It's used in a lot of historical recipes and is definitely worth getting.
- Link to beef suet: https://amzn.to/3pN4Xx9
- Link to vegetarian suet: https://amzn.to/3oCvi2y
- Link to mace: https://amzn.to/3SMkVJ5
- Link to candied peel: https://amzn.to/3dCL7jn
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