[Sca-cooks] plum pudding

[Huette von Ahrens]

Here is what the Oxford Companion to Food says'
under the category 'Christmas pudding':

Christmas pudding, the rich culmination of a long
process of development of 'plum puddings' which
can be traced back to the early 15th century.
The first types were not specifically associated
with Christmas.  Like early mince pies, they
contained meat, of which a token remain in the
use of suet.  The original form, plum pottage,
was made from chopped beef or mutton, onions and
perhaps other root vegetables, and dried fruit,
thickened with breadcrumbs, and flavoured with
wine, herbs, and spices.  As the name suggests,
it is a fairly liquid preparation: this was 
before the invention of the pudding cloth made
large puddings feasible.  As was usual with such
dishes, it was served at the beginning of a meal.
When new kinds of dried fruit became available
in Britain, first raisins, then prunes in the
16th century, they were added.  The name 'plum'
refers to a prune; but it soon came to mean any
dried fruit.

In the 16th century variants were made with
white meat such as chicken or veal; and gradually
the meat came to be omitted, to be replaced by
suet.  The root vegetables also disappeared,
although even now Christmas pudding often still
includes a token carrot.  The rich dish was
served on feast days such as All Saints' Day,
Christmas, and New Year's Day.  By the 1670s,
it was associated with Christmas and called
'Christmas pottage'. The old plum pottage
continued to be made into the 18th century, and
both versions were still served as a filling
first course rather than a dessert.

Not all plum puddings were rich, festive, or
ceremonial.  Plum duff, essentially a suet
pudding with less fruit and other enrichment,
remained popular for centuries.

Even before Christmas pudding had attained its
modern form, its consumption on Christmas Day
had been banned by Oliver Cromwell.  This was
not simply a sign of his Puritan attitudes.  The
Christian Church everywhere was conscious that
Christmas was merely a veneer of the old Celtic
winter solstice fire festival celebrating the
'rebirth' of the sun after the shortest day,
21 or 22 of December.  This is still frankly
celebrated in the Orkneys with the rite of Up
Helly A, when a ship is burnt.  Signs of paganism
keep emerging: for example the Yule Log, a huge
log which is kept burning for all twelve days of
the festival, and is still commemorated in the
traditional French log-shaped Christmas cake. 
Other relics are the candles on the Christmas 
tree (imported from Germany in the time of Prince
Albert), and the flaming pudding itself.  There
had been a similar official attitude in Scotland
towards the consumption of the Black Run on
Twelfth Night.

What currently counts as the traditional 
Christmas pudding recipe has been more or less
established since the 19th century. Usual
ingredients are: suet, brown sugar (not always)
; raisins; sultanas; currants; candied peel;
breadcrumbs; eggs; spices such as cinnamon,
nutmeg, and cloves, or allspice or mixed spice;
and alcohol (e.g. stout, rum, brandy).  Optional
ingredients include flour, fresh orange or lemon
peel, grated carrot or apple, almonds.  The
result is a remarkably solid pudding which has
to be boiled for many hours then preferably left
to mature for up to a year and reboiled on the
day.  A large pudding resists this treatment
better than small ones--though few are as large
as the one made in Devon in 1819, which weighed
over 400 kg (900 lb).

The pudding is traditionally served with rum or
brandy butter (US hard sauce) made from butter,
sugar, and spirit.  It is topped with a sprig of
holly and set alight with rum or another spirit.
This part of the tradition is still widely
observed, but recipes for the pudding itself
have been evolving in the direction of something
lighter and more digestible.

The shape of the pudding is traditionally
spherical, from being tied up in a floured
pudding cloth.  Most modern puddings are made
in a basin covered with layers of foil and
greaseproof paper.

Huette

--- Sue Clemenger <mooncat at in-tch.com> wrote:

> I always thought of them as a victorian thing,
> myself, but I sure could 
> be wrong.
> Oddly enough, at the first feast for which I
> was largely responsible 
> (actually the event steward, but the cook was
> out of town for christmas 
> break during most of the prep), I did flaming
> plum puddings.  ah, memories!
> --maire
> 
> Mary Morman wrote:
> 
> > gentle friends,
> > i am cooking a 12th night feast with an
> Elizabethan theme and intend to 
> > serve a flaming plum pudding to high table. 
> i realize that this is not 
> > precisely in period, and will be sure to tell
> people that, but i'm going 
> > to do it anyway.  can someone help me with
> EXACTLY how out of period it 
> > will be?  i'm remembering Laura Mason's talk
> at the Leeds Conference on 
> > Food two years ago, and thinking that I'm
> "prevericating" by probably 
> > less than a hundred years. elaina
> > 
> 
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> 

=====
Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they 
shall never cease to be amused.


		
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