[Sca-cooks] Plum pudding

Sat Dec 10 15:14:52 PST 2016

Oh my, something with chicken, bread crumbs, 'sweet spices' and dried 
fruits sounds *wonderful*, and I have a pudding cloth ... though I could 
see baking it in a sealed clay pot [ok, french white casserole dish ...]

On 12/10/2016 6:07 PM, Stefan li Rous wrote:
> I think there was some recent discussion here on whether plum pudding was period?
>
> In searching for puddings for Aruvqan, I came across this message. Like many other things, whether plum puddings are period, may depend upon your definition of “plum pudding”. The predecessors certainly were.
>
>  From the Florilegium puddings-msg file:
> ========
> Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 09:45:29 -0800 (PST)
> From: Huette von Ahrens <ahrenshav at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] plum pudding
> To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
>
> 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
> ========
>
> Stefan
> --------
> THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
>     Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at gmail.com
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/marksharris
> **** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****
>
>
>
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>
>
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