Pudding is a classic English Christmas treat. This dish, popular in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and former English colonies, is prepared from flour, bread crumbs, eggs, fat, cream and spices in a water bath. Word pudding comes from French boudin, derived from the Latin botellus, which means “small sausage” and proves that in ancient times pudding was not a dessert at all and included meat. Although in modern English there is still a distinction between the concepts of pudding and Christmas pudding, in the minds of the average city dweller, pudding is a sweet dessert at Christmas.
Let’s not dive deep into the abyss of traditions and cult meanings of dishes. Let's focus on the main details and get straight to the tasty stuff. On the twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity, a special prayer is said in English churches, which is a sign for housewives to begin preparing the traditional Christmas pudding. This Sunday is called pudding or kneading Sunday. The date is floating, so the pudding is conventionally made on the eve of Christmas (which for Catholics is December 25). More precisely, the pudding begins to be prepared 3 weeks before Christmas and the finished dish is left in a dark, cool place to mature.
The British have several versions regarding the origin of pudding. According to one, pudding was originally called thick oatmeal porridge cooked in meat broth (plum-porridge). Bread crumbs, nuts, honey and prunes were added to this porridge and served very hot. This was the pudding back in the 16th century. According to another version, pudding originated as a means of preserving meat, which was stored in a cool place along with prunes. When cooking the pudding, spices, cereals and prunes were added, and from the end of the 18th century sugar was added. Apparently, the British really liked sugar, who decided that someone was superfluous in this bunch. Naturally, the extra meat (or meat broth from the first version) turned out to be unnecessary. The prune has also disappeared, remaining only in the name - to this day Christmas pie is called plum (plum in English means “plum”).
Already in the Victorian era, that is, in the 19th century, pudding consists of flour, fruit, fat and sugar with the addition of spices. The pudding became sweet and turned into a dessert. One less ancient dish. But every cloud has a silver lining, and the new pudding quickly won the hearts and stomachs of those with a sweet tooth. The delicacy turned out to be really tasty, it was easy to prepare at home, and the new dessert did not require any special culinary knowledge. Pudding became a truly democratic dessert and a symbol of the British Empire. The imperial scope influenced the composition of the new dish - now it contained 16 ingredients from a variety of English colonies. This is the kind of pudding that is now considered classic. One of its first samples was presented to King George V in 1927.
This was the imperial Christmas pudding. Check out the list of ingredients from various British colonies:
. 1 pound currants (Australia);
. 2 pounds raisins (Australia or South Africa);
. 5 ounces grated apple (British or Canadian);
. 1 lb bread crumbs (UK);
. 1 lb. beef tallow (New Zealand);
. 6.5 ounces candied fruit (South Africa);
. 8 ounces flour (UK);
. 8 ounces sugar (West Indies or Guiana);
. 5 eggs (Britain or Ireland);
. 0.5 ounces ground cinnamon (India or Ceylon);
. 0.25 ounces ground cloves (Zanzibar);
. 0.25 ounces ground nutmeg (West Indies);
. A quarter teaspoon of Indian or West Indian pudding spice;
. A quarter of jilla brandy (Australia, South Africa, Cyprus or Palestine);
. Quarter jilla rum (Jamaica or Guiana);
. Pint of beer (England, Wales, Scotland or Ireland).
In Great Britain there are many rituals associated with pudding. For example, every family member must take part in its preparation, and the dough must be mixed from east to west in honor of the three wise men who visited the baby Jesus. A button, ring or sixpence was kneaded into the pudding batter. The one who found a button in a piece of pudding was awaiting a bachelor's life, and the ring - a wedding. A silver sixpence promised good luck in business and travel.
The pudding also comes with a sweet sauce, which you can’t live without. Sauces to choose from - brandy or rum butter, lemon or custard. Finally, by candlelight, the finished pudding is decorated with a sprig of holly, poured over a mixture of cognac and sugar and set on fire. It burns with a dull blue flame and creates a unique Christmas mood. By the way, it is not necessary to set the pudding on fire, but experts say that it is much tastier this way.
But from theory to practice. Let's prepare the pudding, just like the English grandmothers did. Surprisingly, only every tenth Englishman now makes his own Christmas pudding. The rest buy ready-made puddings in supermarkets.
One of many
and modern pudding recipes:
Ingredients:
100 g flour,
3 eggs,
150 g bread crumbs (preferably fresh),
125 g kidney fat,
100 g brown sugar,
300 g raisins,
200 g candied fruit mixture,
100 ml dark beer,
75 ml cognac,
50 g candied cherries,
50 g almonds,
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon,
½ teaspoon grated nutmeg,
a couple of cloves (ground),
zest of one lemon,
3 peas of allspice (ground),
½ teaspoon ginger,
salt to taste.
Preparation:
In a bowl, mix flour, bread crumbs, nutmeg, salt, spices, sugar and fat, which, by the way, can be replaced with butter or vegetable oil. Add zest, dried and candied fruits, cherries and almonds and mix everything. Stop! Make a wish. We continue - add eggs, brandy and beer, mix with special care, cover the bowl with cling film and put in the refrigerator overnight.
On the second day, we select a mold for the volume (about 1 liter), grease it with butter (preferably butter, but vegetable oil is also possible), transfer the contents, and compact it. The pudding should be covered with paper to prevent it from drying out. To do this, cut out a circle of parchment to fit the diameter of the mold, grease it thickly with butter and close it like a lid. Additionally, you can attach a foil “lid” on top or select an iron one of similar diameter. Tie a rope to the mold or make a “handle” out of foil so you can freely pull the mold out of the hot water. Pour water into the pan so that it reaches the middle of the mold or a little higher, warm it and place the mold with the pudding in the pan. Bring the water to a boil and cook the pudding for 6 hours over low heat.
Remove the finished pudding, cool, remove the “lids” and make new ones from paper, but without oil. Cover again with a lid or foil and leave in a dark place to ripen until Christmas. Classic pudding matures in about 2 weeks, but you can reduce the time to several days. Before serving, the pudding is heated again in a water bath for a couple of hours. And don't forget about coins and buttons, if you added them - eat carefully!
You already understand that this is not all. Prepare the sauce and hot sauce for the pudding.
Ingredients:
4 yolks,
1 d spoon of starch,
100 g sugar,
500 ml cream or full-fat milk,
70 ml cognac,
vanilla or vanillin to taste.
Preparation:
Heat the cream over low heat, beat the yolks with sugar and starch. Add vanilla. Without ceasing to stir, add hot cream to the mixture. Place the resulting mixture on the fire and, stirring continuously, make a cream without bringing the entire mixture to a boil. Top the pudding with cream or serve it separately - the choice is yours.
Finally, prepare the coating: mix 50 ml of cognac and 1 teaspoon of sugar or, better yet, powdered sugar. Pour this mixture over the finished pudding and set it on fire. Cognac can be replaced with rum. It is better not to use vodka, alcohol or other not very good-smelling liquids in pouring.
Not all puddings take that long to cook. Apart from instant puddings from the English supermarket, the best choice for the impatient is rice or nut pudding, which are prepared relatively quickly. They do not have complex flavors or a specific structure, but they are also very good.
Ingredients:
150 g walnuts,
3 eggs,
250 g white bread,
¾ cup sugar
1½ cups milk,
100 g butter.
Preparation:
Soak the white bread crumb in milk. Dry the nuts, peel them and mince them or grind them in another way. Grind the yolks with sugar, mix with nuts and soaked crumb. Add softened butter to the mixture. Mix well. Beat the whites, add very carefully to the main mass, stirring slowly. Place in a mold greased with butter or vegetable oil and sprinkled with breadcrumbs. Bake for 30-40 minutes, serve hot. Serve the sauce separately or pour it over the pudding.
Ingredients:
1 cup short grain rice,
1 cup of sugar,
100 g butter,
2 glasses of milk,
4 eggs,
50 g candied fruits,
100 g raisins,
Vanillin.
Preparation:
Rinse the rice thoroughly, place in boiling water, after 10 minutes of boiling, drain in a colander and let the water drain. Drain off the remaining water in which the rice was cooked, return the rice to the pan, pour in hot milk and cook for another 15 minutes. Refrigerate. Grind the yolks with sugar, add vanillin, mix with rice. Add candied fruit pieces, raisins, butter and crushed nuts. Beat the whites until foamy and add to the main mixture. Stir gently. Place in a mold greased with butter and sprinkled with breadcrumbs. Bake for 30-40 minutes on medium heat. Serve fruit or berry sauce separately.
In addition to dessert puddings, there are unsweetened puddings - most often based on cereals, with meat or animal fat in the composition. For example, meat pudding with semolina porridge. Don't let the composition scare you - the result is very interesting!
Pudding with meat and semolina porridge (1 serving)
Ingredients:
120 g beef,
20 g butter,
10 g semolina,
½ egg
1/3 glass of water.
Preparation:
Clean the meat from tendons and fat. Boil and pass through a meat grinder. Combine with semolina porridge, add the yolk and beaten white. Stir and steam in the pan until ready. Place the finished pudding on a plate and serve with a piece of butter.
The technique of mixing the ingredients with eggs, adding a large amount of animal fat and steaming allows some freedom in kitchen expression, which necessarily affects the composition of the pudding ingredients. In puddings you can find many flavorings: chocolate, cottage cheese, apricot, peach or apricot mass, cookies, zucchini, carrots, rutabaga, fish, chicken and many different exotic ingredients. You just need to remember that aging for many days is not suitable for puddings containing fish, meat, cottage cheese or an abundance of animal fat.
You don't have to wait until Christmas or count down 25 Sundays to make this wonderful English dish. Prepare pudding according to the occasion and mood.
Classic or traditional Christmas pudding consists of dried fruit, bread crumbs, internal fat and spices, it is prepared in advance and allowed to mature for 2-3 weeks. I have never tried such a method with aging in a cool place and a recipe using fat, they are still in the plans. And I propose, so to speak, an accelerated version based on a composition close to the traditional one for Christmas pudding.
Dried fruits can be very different. I collected a mixture of raisins, dried apricots and prunes, and dates, figs, and candied fruits can also be added. I use walnuts for this version of pudding, but almonds, hazelnuts, and a mixture of them are also suitable. I suggest using either crackers or bran as a bread base. Select a mixture of spices to suit your taste: vanilla, cinnamon, anise or star anise, nutmeg, coriander, cardamom, ginger, cloves. My composition is as follows: vanilla sugar, ground cinnamon, dry ginger powder.
Prepare the ingredients according to the list:
Dried fruits need to be washed, steamed if necessary, and cut all large dried fruits into small pieces, for example, the size of raisins.
Pour alcohol over dried fruits, add lemon zest and juice.
Mix this mass with the selected spices and leave to soak.
Mix eggs with brown sugar and honey or syrup to taste.
Melt the butter.
Combine aromatic dried fruits with buttery and sweet egg mixture. Add pieces of nuts and grated apple. Stir.
Add flour and white breadcrumbs or, as here, bran crumbs.
Stir and pour the mixture into the molds.
Puddings are often prepared in double boilers. There is a way to bake the pudding in the oven on a baking sheet with water.
I have a multicooker with a steam cooking function. The ramekins containing the pudding mixture can be placed on the lower rack and/or in the upper bowl.
Cook puddings for 1 hour or a few minutes longer.
Let the puddings ripen for 1-2 days to better develop the aroma of spices.
Christmas pudding is ready.
When served, Christmas puddings are poured with warm cognac or dark rum and set on fire. My husband and I set fire, but we didn’t get any beautiful photos with the fire...))) Then the puddings are accompanied by syrups, whipped cream, etc.
Bon appetit!
Christmas pudding- it’s a good thing, although its taste does not always captivate you from the very first spoon. It is very filling and a bit heavy to complete an already not very dietary feast. But for a separate tea party in the middle of the day it is an excellent option.
Who doesn't know about English Christmas pudding, or flame pudding? I even know of some people who each year begin the long laborious process of boiling the pudding and who are not residents of the British Isles. Me included.
Tradition calls for mixing the pudding on the Sunday closest to November 30th. That's what it's called " kneading" Some people do this earlier, even at the end of summer, since the pudigu can only benefit from good aging. But it’s not too late to make the pudding in the first ten days of December - it will be ready for our Christmas.
A true British housewife will not waste her time on one small pudding. They are cooked several times at a time so that they can be eaten and presented to numerous family and friends. We are content with one small one, for one pint, that is, 570 ml. After trying several recipes, I came back to where I started: Delia Smith's recipe. True, from the very beginning I replaced the internal fat, so characteristic of the “correct” and “classic” Christmas meal, with butter, and I also changed some other things in my own way. But still, the primary source is Delia.
I take 60 g butter, cut into small cubes
30 g flour, sifted
60 g crumbs of ground or grated stale bread (or if all the bread in the house is fresh - just dried in the oven)
120 g dark muscovado sugar (it happened that I replaced it with golden demerara, then for a greater aroma you need to slightly increase the amount of spices)
orange and lemon zest, grated - about a teaspoon each
nutmeg (required freshly grated)
ground cinnamon - a good pinch
a mixture of gingerbread spices or maybe ginger, cloves - to the best of your taste
270-280 g of a mixture of different varieties of raisins (in the original recipes, about half of the mixture is dark raisins, and a quarter each is light “sultan” and currant raisins; instead of currants, I take a large “jumbo” and chop it slightly, and add a little more finely chopped dates mentioned in some of the recipes I've read)
15 g candied orange and lemon peels, finely chopped
15g almonds, blanched, peeled and finely chopped
half a medium apple, peeled and finely chopped
1 egg
1 tbsp. l whiskey or rum
70-80 ml of English stout (and if it’s not there, I replace it with some local dark beer, porter)
What to do:
In a deep bowl, thoroughly mix the butter with flour, add bread crumbs, spices, sugar, kneading the mixture after adding each component. Gradually add spices, dried fruits, almonds, zest, and apple in the same manner. In a separate container, mix the egg with rum and beer. Pour the liquid over the mixture of dry ingredients and mix everything together thoroughly. You should get a clay-like mass. Delia Smith, whose recipe I took as a basis, explains this: If you fill a spoon with the prepared mixture and hit it against the side of the bowl, it should slide off the spoon easily.
If the mixture seems too dry, you can add a little beer. Now the bowl needs to be covered with a towel and left to ripen for 1 day.
When you are ready to cook the pudding, you need to carefully and generously grease the mold with oil and lay out the mixture, pressing tightly. The top of the mixture should be at least half a centimeter below the edge of the pan. Now you need to take baking paper, make a fold on it and cut out a circle with a diameter 3-4 centimeters larger than the top of the mold. Do the same with foil. The fold is needed for steam escaping during cooking. Cover the mold first with paper, then with foil, tie it tightly with twine and make a handle from the same twine, with which you can easily pull the mold out of the boiling water. Place a saucer or plate upside down in a large saucepan, and place the pudding prepared for cooking on it.
The bottom of the pudding pan should not touch the bottom of the pan. Once I placed a silicone round mold in the pan, it turned out to be convenient. But there must be water between the silicone and the bottom of the pan, otherwise the silicone will cook and crack. Pour boiling water into the pan until it reaches approximately the middle of the pan, cover with a lid and cook the pudding for 6-8 hours at a very low boil, adding boiling water from time to time as it evaporates. Do not add cold water! Previously, I cooked the pudding for the allotted 8 hours, but having reduced the time by 2 hours, I didn’t notice a difference. Cool the cooked pudding.
Wrap with a fresh portion of paper and foil and leave in a cool, dry place until the holiday. In the absence of a spacious English pantry, I keep it on the windowsill.
On day “X”, heat it in boiling water for 1-1.5 hours. A simpler and faster way is to place (turn) the pudding on a suitable dish, and then heat it in the microwave at low power. Serve with whipped cream, ice cream - it's very nice to pile them on top of dark pudding - or with alcohol sauce.
Well-kneaded and cooked pudding easily comes out of shape, this should not be a problem. There is a problem with the form itself. Pudding tins don't line up in orderly rows on the shelves of crockery shops outside Britain, and they're not available everywhere in London either. You can adapt a salad bowl or bowl of suitable shape and volume. It is only necessary that the bowl has an edge to which you can attach a rope when tying it, and that it is heat-resistant, otherwise all your work will go into the trash bin along with the burst bowl.
But if Christmas pudding still seems complicated and unclear, you can practice with a simpler, delicious pudding that resembles a vanilla sponge cake with caramel sauce.
For a 1.5 liter mold you need:
for the biscuit:
250g softened butter, plus a little more for greasing the pan
250 g sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
250 g flour
1 tsp. baking powder
50 ml milk
for caramel sauce:
75 g sugar
25 g butter
50 ml heavy cream
What to do:
To prepare the sponge cake, use a mixer to beat the butter and sugar until creamy and homogeneous. Add the eggs one at a time, continuing to beat, then the vanilla extract. Sift the flour and baking powder into a separate bowl, then stir the flour into the butter-egg mixture in portions, making sure the mixture is smooth and free of lumps. Add milk to the mixture last. Prepare (oil) the mold and tie as above for the Christmas pudding. Cook for 2 hours until a toothpick comes out clean from the center of the cake.
To prepare the caramel sauce, dissolve the sugar in two tablespoons of water in a small saucepan and place over low heat. Bring to a boil and cook over low heat, without stirring, until a thick, dark caramel forms. Place the butter in a saucepan, stir until dissolved, remove from heat, pour in the cream and stir again. Turn the finished pudding onto a suitable dish, pour over the caramel sauce and serve.
Interestingly, English Christmas in its modern form does not have such an ancient history. The Anglican Church was suspicious of the noisy and hearty celebration of Christmas, not without reason seeing in it echoes of pagan celebrations. Therefore, the celebration of Christmas was even banned for some time. Modern obligatory signs of English Christmas originate during the long reign of Queen Victoria and appeared with the light hand of her adored husband Prince Albert. That is, the traditions are a little German... Including a decorated tree, and the exchange of gifts that previously took place on New Year’s. By the way, in Scotland, where the Puritan ideas of preacher John Knox were very strong, Christmas was practically not celebrated until the 50s of the 20th century. Until now, for the Scots, as for many of us, the main holiday is New Year.
What dish is no Christmas table complete without? If you were asked such a question, you would have to think about it.
But the British, Irish, Australians and Canadians will answer without hesitation: Christmas plum pudding. How can you imagine Christmas without this sweet, incredibly aromatic, iconic dessert, which has become a national symbol of Great Britain for centuries?
Stir-up Sunday
Holidays cannot be suddenly introduced “by decree,” but their attributes appear over time. For several centuries after Trinity, on the 25th Sunday of the year, an extraordinary ritual is performed. In every Anglican church they say a prayer, which is a kind of permission to knead the pudding, and Sunday is called that - kneading. In every home, according to a family recipe, a Christmas pudding is prepared in November from a killer amount of dried fruit, nuts and lard (lard), which ripens before Christmas.
How we mixed the pudding
Yes, I did a symbolic kneading Sunday. The whole family participated in the actual kneading process. We even managed to make wishes on Skype! They stirred the pudding from east to west, according to British canons, in honor of the wise men and the baby Jesus.
I couldn’t find a sixpence silver coin, so I decided not to put symbols in the pudding: a ring for a wedding, a bone for long hikes and travels, a button for bachelors and old maids. But you can if you want.
While mixing, I wanted to eat the dough with a spoon! What an aroma was spreading throughout the house...
We cooked it...
I approached the preparation of pudding thoroughly. I prepared a form, natural snow-white fabric, and ribbon for tying (well, without ribbon!). The baby will have to lie alone for more than a month and wait in the wings.
Speckled Dick
I had the experience of making an old recipe for larde, another iconic British dish. Look who's interested! Served with Dick.
For cooking, I built a kind of water bath - I took water into a saucepan and placed a metal strainer with a comfortable handle, specially designed for such purposes.
The pudding was carefully wrapped and took what seemed like an eternity to cook. For exactly four hours we enjoyed the Christmas aromas of dried fruits and a mixture of spices.
Let's set it on fire!
“And burn it with a blue flame”... You have probably heard this well-established expression many times, and even said it yourself. Flambéing (flambé) is a method in which a scorched or burning dish is served. Actually, it is not the product itself that burns, but the strong drink that is poured over what was prepared with love. You can flambe anything, from fruit to meat.
Before you set fire to the pudding in front of your guests, it’s worth practicing on something less expensive. The very first thing that comes to mind is bananas and pancakes. There are two ways to proceed. The first is to pour the heated drink over it and set it on fire. Water the second one with the already burning drink.
Catch this sign if you want to become a professional arsonist:
Don't forget to take care of the tray, dish or plate. Do I need to remind you that you need to use fire-resistant, non-combustible materials?
Holiday
To judge a pudding, you have to eat it.
English proverb
So, after the English Christmas pudding was cooked, I took it out, cooled it, removed the parchment layer, and soaked it in aromatic dark rum. Then she wrapped it in clean white cotton cloth, tied it with a ribbon (well, how could we live without it!), wrapped it in parchment and put it in the refrigerator.
The consistency at the very beginning was disappointing - hard and compressed. After two weeks the pudding began to change.
So, it’s time to remember all the books that we read and thought about pudding: the fantastic “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll, the intriguing “The Adventures of the Christmas Pudding” by Agatha Christie, the iconic “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens, the romantic “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte, the sad “Little Raggedy One” by James Greenwood, the fabulous Irish phantasmagoria “The Enchanted Pudding” and, of course, “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens:
“...Mrs. Cratchit left the room all alone to take the pudding out of the cauldron. She was so worried that she wanted to do it without witnesses. How come the pudding didn’t arrive! Oh, how it will fall apart when they take it out of the mold! Well, how did they steal it while they were having fun..."
Interesting fact
It is interesting that after the First World War, when the British Empire began to come apart at the seams, it was Christmas pudding that played an important political role as the connecting link that made it possible to once again unite the British Empire and instill a spirit of unity and power in the nation. In 1927, King George V was presented with a pudding made from ingredients collected from all over the empire (16 products from more than a dozen territories). At the same time, the Imperial Trade Council conducted a series of advertising campaigns that were designed to encourage people to actively buy goods produced by the British Empire. “The advertising idea was simple: with an empire you would have imperial pudding, without it you would have just breadcrumbs, flour and beer. Or, as George Orwell put it, without an empire, Britain would be “just a cold and unimportant little island where we all have to work hard.” , and live on potatoes and herring." (N. Ferguson, "Empire. How Britain created the modern world").
Below the cut: origin of the name, postcards, recipe
Many British postcards feature an image of a traditional British Christmas dish - pudding. It's called Christmas pudding or plum pudding.
This dish is difficult to prepare; they begin to make it a week before Christmas.
Joseph Clark (British, 1834-1926) A Christmas Dole. 1889
There is a coin baked into the pudding, and it is a great joy to find it in your piece.
This dish is difficult to prepare; they begin to make it a week before Christmas.
Here's how Wikipedia briefly writes about it:
Prepared several weeks before the holiday, then “ripened” in a cool place and served on the first day of Christmas. Plum pudding is a dark-colored steamed pudding with the addition of dried fruits, nuts and beef fat (sometimes replaced with vegetable fat). Previously, a special bag was used to prepare Christmas pudding, hence its name: English. plum - round; but since the beginning of the 20th century it has been widely replaced by the pudding mold. Before serving, the pudding is heated, often soaked in brandy or other alcoholic drink, and flambéed at the table. Christmas pudding is often served with sweet cream based on butter and brandy or casted - a liquid custard made from eggs and milk.
This is the short version. I will give one of the detailed recipes at the end of the post.
Imperial Christmas pudding. Royal Cook's Recipe 1928
And now a selection of postcards and one of the recipes
Christmas pudding is the king of all desserts.
Here are the stages of its preparation.
1) Take 500 gr. beef perirenal fat. This is the basis of the pudding - you can't do without it. If you can’t tolerate it in a dish, it’s better not to make it. You can buy it at the market (very rarely seen in stores), the seller himself will select a better piece. You need to cut the fat finely and finely.
2) The classic version - three types of raisins, the main thing is that they are without seeds: 500 gr. black, 500 gr. golden, 250 gr. currants. Rinse and dry.
3) 250 gr. candied candied citrus fruits. Ideally - 2-3 varieties (for example, orange, lemon and lime). As a last resort, you can replace half with candied cherries. They need to be crushed, but not to the point of dust (literally a few turns in the blender).
4)125 gr. peeled almonds. The skin can be removed after scalding with boiling water.
5) Mix all these ingredients in a bowl. Add 500 g to them. ground crackers (buy regular vanilla crackers, crush them with a mortar) and 125 gr. wheat flour. Knead thoroughly again.
(Stages of preparing and eating pudding)
6) Now one of the main components of pudding is spices. In England, a mixture of “4 spices” is added to it. This is white pepper, cloves, ginger and nutmeg - in approximately equal proportions (slightly less than cloves). You can mix it yourself - you will need 25 grams for the pudding. Grind the cloves, ginger and nutmeg in a coffee grinder. The same amount, 25 gr. you will need cinnamon. 50 gr. fiery and powerful spices - you are already beginning to understand how reactive the pudding should be to taste. Pour in and mix with the rest of the ingredients. At this stage, the half-pudding is already moldable, but lacks stickiness.
7) Stickiness will be provided by chicken eggs - 8 pieces. Whisk them and pour into the mixture. 300 ml goes there. milk.
8) Another one of the most important components of pudding is rum. You need 2 full glasses (500 million). Take better dark, fragrant, rough varieties. Add the juice of 2 lemons (we get almost grog). A little salt - literally 1 teaspoon.
9) Now knead thoroughly. The resulting weight is about 4 kg, the volume is three liters. Roll out the ball and mix thoroughly. This will take about 10-15 minutes.
10) Take a piece of fabric measuring one meter by one meter. A piece of regular white sheet will do (of course, the fabric should not be dyed). Dip the ball in flour and place it on this cloth. Wrap carefully and tie with twine for security.
11) Dip the pudding ball into boiling water and cook for 4-4.5 hours over low heat under the lid. Add water periodically (only boiling water!).
12) Turn on the hood in the kitchen and the windows throughout the apartment. Be patient and don’t open the door to your neighbors knocking on the door.
After 4 hours, remove the ball. The consistency will resemble cottage cheese (to put it more roughly, something slimy). Let it cool down to room temperature, put it in the same cloth in a pan and put it in the refrigerator for 3-4 weeks (tie the pan tightly, otherwise all the food will smell).
Anonymous Artist Making a Christmas Pudding. Illustration from Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management (Making the Christmas Pudding. Illustration from Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management). 1880.
During this time, the pudding, like cheese, ripens and turns into a hard ball. After six months of aging, it will be even tastier, and real gourmets only respect pudding aged for a year. Fat, rum and spices prevent it from spoiling. The perfectionist also pours 2-3 tablespoons of the pudding every day while it is ripening. But this is for those who are too picky.