“A good plum pudding. – Carefully extract the stones from three hundred-weight raisins, and place them in a fierce oven to cool. Then take one sack of flour, two ounces of sugar, three bushels of sand, one peck of Portland cement, two bottles of blacking, four gallons of paraffin, twelve grams of strychnine, four ditto prussic acid, and half a teaspoonful of milk. Mix all well together, and simmer gently in cold water for three months. Dish up carefully, and give it to your neighbours dog.”
Waterford Standard, December 24 1890
Plum pudding, or Christmas pudding (pud), is a dish traditionally served on Christmas in Ireland. It is very similar to the plum pudding found in the UK and Australia, also known as figgy pudding. Although it’s called plum pudding, there are no plums in this recipe! It’s a rich mixture of dried fruit, eggs, and spices with the optional addition of spirits.
“Some rude people have been telling me that all this insistence on FOOD at Christmas time is, at best, a slavish following of a Victorian tradition, and, at worst, a seasonal paganism gone made. Not agreeing with either suggestion, I think that the emphasis is laid on the hospitable character of Christmas, when with “open house,” as it were, succeeding generations of Irish women seek to blot out the iniquity of that old Bethlehem story, told long ago, of “NO ROOM AT THE INN.” So one likes to put on a “cut and come again cake” and a noble Christmas pudding, on whose massive bulk no amount of slicing-down and serving-out seems to make the smallest difference.”
Mary Frances Keating, Dublin Sunday Independent, Nov 29 1959
Recipes for plum pudding can be definitively traced to the 17th century, and then started to become popular in Ireland in the 19th century. Earlier recipes, which originated in the 15th century, were meat-heavy (meat was often mixed with fruit to aid in preservation) and the spices called for would have been exotic and considered luxuries in medieval times. Some of these early renditions included oatmeal, and that dish was named “frumenty” or “plum pottage,” what some historians think was a precursor to “plum pudding.” “Plum” was a generic term for dried fruit, and “pudding” is derived from “poding,” a Middle English word for “meat-filled animal stomach.” By the 1640s, plum pudding’s association with Christmas was strong enough for the rumor that Oliver Cromwell banned it to persist into modern times. The Puritan laws instead focused on church services, and when Christmas fell on a fast day in 1644, plum pudding was technically made illegal. It was also considered rich and sinful, and the flames had some pagan connotations. The introduction of the pudding cloth, into which the mixture was tipped, gave the pudding its distinct round shape after it was tied and swelled up. A fun but not historically based fact is that King George I had plum pudding for his first Christmas dinner on the throne in 1714, which led to his nickname, the “Pudding King.” The pudding formula, like many other dishes during this time, became standardized in the Victorian era, where it was introduced to the world by Charles Dickens:
“Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding. In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered: flushed, but smiling proudly: with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top. “Oh, a wonderful pudding!” Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.”
A Christmas Carol
Plum pudding was provided as part of Christmas dinner for the 270 inmates of the Mendicity Institution in Dublin in 1844, along with roast beef, and it was also served to the widows and children of The Governors of St. Paul’s Parochial Schools and Widows’s Alms House. That next year, in 1845, Eliza Acton bestowed the name “Christmas Pudding” upon her plum pudding recipe in Modern Cookery for Private Families.
The pudding was made four to six weeks before Christmas, often on the last Sunday of November before Advent, called Stir Up Sunday, a practice that has not lost its popularity today. After hours of steaming and boiling, it was then hung up on a string. Myrtle Allen recommends giving the puddings at least six weeks to mature, and says they can be kept for a year – the last are eaten at Easter. This gave it time to mellow and mature, or be stolen by the children! The shopping and preparation had to be done well in advance – the fruit and nuts had to be washed, pitted, shelled, ground, etc, and all by hand. The foreign origins of these ingredients often led to problems such as exorbitant prices and shortages in Europe’s Northwest. The “Economical plum pudding” recipes printed in Irish papers in the 1940s hinted at a scarcity of the dried fruit traditionally used, and prunes, dates, figs, and apricots were suggested as substitutes, as well as grated carrots. The cost of “war flour” was pointed to as the reason for its absence on the South Dublin Union’s Christmas menu in 1941, and was replaced with carrageen trifle when outside bakers said they were unable to supply plum puddings.
Developments in cooking technology shortened the pudding process from days to hours, with microwave ovens taking the place of large pots.
“There is an old but not yet superannuated maxim, “if you want a thing well done do it yourself,” and this certainly applies to the making of the Christmas pudding. The growing fashion of buying ready-made puddings at the storekeeper’s, like one buys jams or confectionary, is one more sign of the fading away of the romance of Christmas, but as a rule the bought plum pudding is a poor substitute for what the good housewife can produce, and it lacks the sentiment that attaches to the family pudding, in which is hidden the nimble sixpence, the silver thimble, the wedding ring, and the unobtrusive button. In the old days the kitchen was the heart of the kingdom at this time of year, but the modern tendency to spend Christmas away from home has weakened the traditions of the festival in this respect even in not a few families to the disappearance of the homemade pudding, and its time-honoured associations.”
Roscommon Messenger 26 December 1908
On Christmas Day, after a dinner of turkey or goose, the pudding was reheated, and sometimes doused in liquor and set afire – to some, a reflection of Christ’s passion. It was topped with a sprig of holly, dusted with sugar, and usually accompanied by cream or custard and rum sauce (“A Christmas pudding without sauce would be quite as unusual as beef without mustard, in the opinion of most people” – Wicklow People, Dec 17 1892).
What makes a plum pudding an Irish plum pudding? This dish is so English it was used as a symbol of the Empire itself, and so becomes political.
“No wonder John Bull is dyspeptic, hypochondriac, and suicidical, when plum puddings and malt liquor occupy his stomach so often….Yet John wonders why he suffers from indigestion! Leave off plum pudding. — The French, who know better than we do the science of cookery, laugh at us for still patronizing it.”
Dublin Evening Mail, 21 July 1824
In comparing the recipes, the main difference between Irish plum pudding recipes and the “traditional” ones associated with England is the use of Irish whiskey instead of rum, brandy or cognac. I did find one specific reference to”Irish Plum Pudding” in the Diss Express in 1878 that supports this theory: “(very old recipe) —2lb. of raisins stoned, 2lb. currants picked, 1/4lb. each of candied lemon, orange, and citron; 2lb. moist sugar, dark color ; 2lb. beef suet, chopped very fine; one grated nutmeg, one teaspoonful each of ground cinnamon, cloves, and salt. Mix all thoroughly, and, if not immediately wanted, pack in a jar, and pour in a glass of whisky. So far it may be prepared a fortnight before required. To mix the pudding beat twenty eggs, add them to two good tablespoonfuls of treacle and a glass of whisky, and the other ingredients already prepared, and mix thoroughly. Butter a cloth, and slightly dust it with flour, tie the pudding up, and at once put it into a pot of boiling water, which should cover it; boil six hours.” Another “economical” tip in the same article calls for grated carrots (again!) and potatoes instead of eggs and suet – it’s no wonder grated carrots are still in many pudding recipes today.
Folklore (and Jokes)
There are many traditions and superstitions surrounding the Christmas pud. Many of it relates to the stirring of the pudding. This is similar to the tradition of taking a turn if one were to pass by a butter churn, which is also the neighborly thing to do! Every member of the family is to stir with a wooden spoon from east to west, in honor of the journey of the three kings. This was done for luck, and to make a wish, with “may we be alive this time twelve months” a rather foreboding one. Another tradition, which is seen in other feast-related foods like barmbrack, is hiding objects in the pudding. If you really want to be traditional, you can add these symbolic charms to your pudding mixture. I would let anyone eating it know ahead of time! For an extra precaution, sterilize first and wrap each charm in wax or baking paper. A silver coin, usually a sixpence, represented good luck, particularly financial. Horseshoes and wishbones also came to represent luck. Rings or bells meant imminent marriage (many stores advertised ready-made puddings with GOLDEN RINGS in them) while finding a button or thimble meant a lifetime of bachelor or spinsterhood. Anchors meant safety. You could even buy charms specifically made for puddings, and they were sold at Harrods! I am at a loss for the meaning of the donkey.
Other traditions with familiar themes are collecting nine pieces of pudding from neighbors (a further belief is that after the ninth piece has been eaten, the next person to shake hands is their future spouse). Another piece of folklore with Christian origins is that the traditional thirteen ingredients of the pudding (for example: flour, breadcrumbs, spices, suet, eggs, dried fruit, apples, almonds, candied peel, spirit, sugar, lemon/orange juice and treacle) represent Jesus and his twelve disciples. There is no concrete evidence that the Catholic Church had ever supported this, but it ties in nicely with the Christmas association. Related symbolism sees the flaming liquor as a representation of the Passion, and the decorative sprig of holly the “crown of thorns.”
It is always unlucky if the pudding breaks when coming out of the bowl – a pudding broken in half could signify a death or someone leaving the home before the New Year.
Oral histories collected during the 1930s reflect the idea that plum pudding was a relatively modern addition to the average local Christmas menu. However, a decidedly more Irish, and fun, alternative to its history was told by Andrew Carney of Ballymahon, Co Longford to Harry Flood: “At Christmas the special desert which is eaten at Christmas only is plum pudding. When the plum puddings are being made all the people in the house have to stir the mixture. Here is the story which is told in this district of how plum pudding was first made. About four hundred years ago an old sailing ship sailing from Ireland to Spain was lost for three weeks. By this time the ship was short of food and all that was left for them to eat was suet, raisons, flour, spice and all the other things we put in our plum puddings now. So the cook mixed all together and boiled them and they lived on plum pudding until they were saved three days later. When the ship was rescued the cook and crew were so pleased that they told everyone about the puddings. And as it was at Christmas that the pudding was made, all the people since make plum pudding at Christmas.” (NFCS 0751:254)
I also found a few terrible jokes and riddles:
What is the left side of a plum pudding? The side that is not eaten.
Why is a plum pudding like a river? They both have currents (currants).
Flour of England (or America, in some versions!), fruit of Spain, met together in a shower of rain, put in a bag and tied with a string, riddle me that and I’ll give you a ring.
I also came across an interesting game called snapdragon that was played mostly in England through the 16th to the 19th centuries (similar to snapapple, an equally dangerous Halloween game that made it to the US). The premise is to cover a plate of raisins and almonds with brandy, light it on fire, and try to eat as many as possible without getting burned. There’s actually some interesting science behind this, but I only mention snapdragon because I found several references to an origin rooted in “Celtic druidical fire worship” but have found absolutely nothing to back that up. If you want to read more about snapdragon and how to play, Gastro Obscura tells you how.
Ingredients
DRIED FRUIT
If you decide not to stick to the raisin, sultana and currant formula that made traditional plum puddings so darn expensive, you can add any dried fruit, like cherries and cranberries, in any ratio that you like.
SUET
You can see plum pudding’s meat-filled ancestry here. Suet is hard animal fat with a high smoke point, and is used in pastry, especially for crusts, and also for frying. There are quite a few reasons that people may not want to use actual suet. In Ireland, they actually sell shredded vegetarian suet for baking. Shortening is a great substitute for suet, and Crisco vegetable shortening is vegan friendly. You can also use butter or margarine.
CANDIED PEEL
You can either use store-bought peel or try making it at home with this recipe I posted earlier.
COOKING APPLES
Baking apples are chosen for two reasons: their structure, which is firm and holds up in the oven without getting mushy, and their flavor, which is both sweet and tart. In Ireland and the UK, Bramley apples are the most common, but in the US it’s easiest to find Granny Smith and Honeycrisp at the supermarket.
WHISKEY
Most traditional pudding recipes call for rum or brandy to be used in the pudding itself – I have swapped in Irish whiskey for this one. You can also use fortified wine or stout (basically anything with a high alcohol content). The main purpose of the alcohol is to preserve the pudding – this way it can sit for months without spoiling! I also wanted to see what could be used for a non-alcoholic pudding. I have done some research and am pretty comfortable recommending fruit juice in its place (probably grape, apple or citrus). If you choose not to use alcohol, which is perfectly ok, the pudding won’t keep for as long, and should probably be consumed within a week or so, or even set in the fridge.
MAKE IT VEGAN
If you want to make this pudding vegan, there are two things to substitute: the fat (butter, margarine, shortening, suet) and the eggs. For the fat, Crisco vegetable shortening is vegan, or you can use plant-based butter or margarine, or refined coconut oil (unrefined tastes like coconut!). For the eggs, it looks like there has been some success with using aquafaba. Aquafaba is the liquid leftover in a can of chickpeas. You don’t have to whip it, you can just mix it in. One tablespoon of aquafaba replaces one egg white, or one yolk, so I would start with three tablespoons and add more if the mixture looks too dry.
Willie Long’s Christmas Pudding Recipe
I also want to share a wonderful pudding recipe from fellow Ireland House MA student Willie Long and his wife, Emily. He was nice enough to bring some to class last week and it was absolutely delicious! He also made it well in advance, and heated it up before serving (and flambéing!). An interesting but really good swap was made – they used blueberries in lieu of the glacé cherries, which goes to show that you never have to stick to a recipe to create something great. I would love to see what other fruit combinations can be done with plum puddings!
Here is the recipe Willie sent me verbatim:
10oz currants
10oz sultanas
10oz raisins
2oz sweet almonds (skinned & chopped)
1 level teaspoon ground ginger
Pinch of salt
16oz soft brown sugar
4oz mixed finely chopped candied peel
4oz coarsely chopped glacé cherries
1 level teaspoon mixed spice
1 level teaspoon grated nutmeg
8oz breadcrumbs
10oz finely chopped or shredded suet (or butter)
6 eggs
1/2 gill stout (1/4 pint/130ml)
Juice of 1 orange
1 wineglass of brandy
1/2 pint milk approx.
(note: I have modified the above by using grated root ginger for ground ginger, and I replace milk with stout. Also sometimes I use whiskey or Mountain Dew etc depending on what is available)
Grease 3 1 pint basins. Prepare the dried fruit, stone and chop the raisins (now we use seedless!); chop the nuts.
Sift the flour, salt, spice, ginger and nutmeg into a mixing bowl. Add the sugar, breadcrumbs, suet, fruit, nuts, cherries and candied peel. Beat the eggs well and add them to the south, orange juice and brandy, and stir this into the dry ingredients adding enough milk to make the mixture of a soft dropping consistency (which I can best explain as it falls off the spoon if you rotate it 360 degrees)
Put the mixture into the greased basins, do not fill to top of bowl, leave about 1-2 fingers of a gap, as it cooks the mixture will rise. Cover and steam for about 4 hours, until golden brown. If you steam them for too long they will turn black in colour and taste bitter. Take the puddings out of the water, allow to cool, wrap in tin foil/aluminum foil and store in a cool place until required.
On steaming you may recall I mentioned you need to put a saucer or plate in the bottom of the saucepan, and rest the bowl saucer/plate and fill the saucepan 1/3 of the way up the bowl. You will need to check/top up with hot water, or the saucepan will boil out of water.
Irish Plum Pudding Recipe
I’ve taken Darina Allen and Rory O’Connell’s longstanding plum pudding recipe, which makes two gigantic puddings, and halved it with some minor tweaks. This will make one large (3-pint) pudding, but you can make them any size you like – even mini ones in ramekins.
INGREDIENTS
175g (6oz) raisins
175 g (6oz) sultanas
175g (6oz) currants
150g (5oz) brown sugar
175g (6oz) breadcrumbs
175g (6oz or 1 ½ sticks) butter, shortening, margarine (room temperature and cut into pieces), melted refined coconut oil or shredded beef suet
55g (2oz) candied peel, diced
1 small-medium baking apple
55g (2oz) chopped almonds
zest of ½ lemon
¼ tsp ground cloves
pinch (1/16 tsp) salt
3 eggs
31ml (1 ¼fl oz) Irish whiskey or substitute
Equipment: 3-pint pudding basin, or any round Pyrex or heat-resistant dish.
METHOD
- Mix all ingredients together (yes, all of them!). Let sit overnight.
2. Stir ingredients, then place into pudding bowl or tin.
3. Cover the dish with buttered or sprayed parchment paper (two layers), and a layer of aluminum foil if you want, and tie with twine – loop under the bow to create a handle for lifting. Here’s a good video for this if you need visuals like I do.
4. Cook the pudding using one of the following methods. The longer it cooks, the darker it will get:
BOIL/STEAM: Place the bowl in a large pot, and fill with water halfway up the side of the bowl (or place on a steamer basket or trivet). Once boiling, lower heat and cover. Steam for about 6 hours if making one large pudding, checking every hour or so and topping up water if needed. About 3 hours for smaller puddings.
BAKE: Preheat oven to 350°F/180°C. Place bowl in a roasting pan or baking dish, and fill with water halfway up the side. Bake 2 hours for one large pudding, or 1 for smaller, topping up water as needed.
MICROWAVE: No foil for this one! Microwave large puddings for at least 16 minutes on high, and two minutes when turned out on a plate. Smaller puddings will need less time.
You can also use a slow or pressure cooker.
4. To serve, reheat by steaming for around two to three hours or microwaving. Turn onto a plate or serving dish. You can pair it with whipped cream, custard or any of the sauces below. Of course, the drama comes when you set it on fire.
5. Flambé – BE CAREFUL. While the pudding is warm, top with a few teaspoons of granulated sugar and alcohol of choice (whiskey, brandy, etc). Either warm a few additional tablespoons of alcohol in a small saucepan or metal ladle, and light it there. Turn off the lights, and pour over the pud.
Butter & Sauce Recipes
You can serve the pudding plain or with any of the following.
MRS HANRAHAN’S SAUCE
This is the sauce that traditionally accompanies the Myrtle family’s plum pudding recipes. I did not make this yet as I am not allowed to use the good port for cooking!
Ingredients
55g (2oz or 1/2 stick) butter
100g (4.5oz) sugar (raw/turbinado or brown sugar will work)
1 egg
31ml (1 1/4fl oz) sherry
31ml (1 1/4fl oz) port
.75 liters (1 1/4 pint) lightly whipped cream
Method
1. Melt butter, stir in sugar and cool. Whisk egg and add to with sherry and port. Refrigerate.
2. Add whipped cream before serving.
WHISKEY CREAM
From Myrtle Allen’s Ballymaloe Cookbook.
Ingredients
125ml (4 fl oz, 1/2 cup) whipped cream
1/2 tsp sugar
2 tsp whiskey
Method
- Fold sugar and whiskey into cream.
BRANDY BUTTER
From Myrtle Allen’s Ballymaloe Cookbook.
Ingredients
42g (1.5oz, 3 tbs) butter
42g (1.4oz, roughly 5 tsp) castor sugar (granulated is fine)
1 tbs brandy
Method
- Soften butter and beat it with sugar until white and creamy, then add brandy.
I hope you enjoy making this recipe! If you have any questions, I’d be happy to help as best I can.
cleite agus cnámh 