Festive Pudding (the great steamed pudding)
Christmas Plum Pudding
FestiveDocumented🍯 🌶️difficile6 h (+ maturation)
A dense pudding of dried fruits, breadcrumbs and suet, flavored with spices and candied peel, long steamed in a cloth or bowl, then flambéed with brandy at serving.
Why this dish? For a poor child of the Victorian and Edwardian era, the flaming Christmas plum pudding was THE highlight of the year — the only moment of sweet abundance. Chaplin, who filmed so many dream feasts of the destitute (the imaginary meal in *The Gold Rush*), knew this pudding as the very embodiment of festive plenty.
Ah, the Christmas pudding! In poor homes, we'd prepare it weeks ahead, and everyone would stir the batter and make a wish — I suppose I had to wish to eat my fill. It was tied in a floured cloth and boiled for hours, filling the room with a sweet steam that was worth all the dreams. On the great day, we'd pour brandy over it and set it alight — and for a moment, in that blue flame, even the poorest were rich.
Ingredients
- •Raisins and currants — a lot (fruit)
- •Beef suet — a good amount (moistness)
- •Stale breadcrumbs — two handfuls (structure)
- •Candied orange and lemon peel — a little (flavor)
- •Spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger) — a pinch each (spices)
- •Eggs — a few (binder)
- •Brandy or stout — a glass (flavor and flambé)
How it was made : The pudding was made on 'Stir-up Sunday', five weeks before Christmas, to 'mature'. Steaming in a cloth (later in earthenware bowls) allowed it to be cooked in a simple pot without an oven — essential in working-class homes that didn't have one.