Boiled Pudding part 1 - 18th Century Cooking SeriesS2E2

Puddings. Many people hear the word pudding
today and what do they think about? They think about some little custardy stuff in a cup
or something you buy at the grocery store in a box and mix it up with some milk. Pudding
has a much deeper richer history. Today were going to look at boiled puddings from the
17th and 18th century.

So the word pudding is based on the old English
words for gut or for stomach. In the original puddings were actually meat or organ meats
mixed with grains and cooked in stomachs or in intestines, so much more like say, modern
day sausage or, if youve ever heard of a Scottish haggis. Haggises are like a true
old pudding. So these original puddings had their ingredients
stuffed in a stomach and then that tied off and they were put in boiling water and they
were boiled for many hours.

It wasnt until the 17th century, the early 17th century,
when there was a change, there was an evolution in this pudding. They started making these
puddings in cloth sacks instead of in stomachs, and we started seeing the ingredients change
a lot too. Some of the meats were taken out and more grains and some other things put
in there, so were starting to see an evolution in puddings, and puddings started to become
very popular in the 17th and 18th century. Most of those puddings in the 18th century
cookbooks call for 4 main ingredients.

They called for flour. They called for milk. They
called for eggs, and they called for some kind of fat. Usually suet is the one thats
most often referred to in the cookbooks.

Suet can be very hard to come by in the United
States. Its not commonly used in cooking, so today were going to substitute butter
for the suet. So today were going to be working on a
simple boiled plum pudding. Lets get started.

So in addition to our four main ingredients,
weve got some other smaller ingredients that were going to talk about now. Weve
got salt which is in most recipes. We also have a nutmeg were going to grate into
that, which nutmeg is in all the different pudding recipes. Weve got some mace which
is in most of them which is related to nutmeg.

Weve got ground ginger. Ground ginger was
inexpensive in the time period and a very commonly used spice. Its a plum pudding
and the plums arent plums, but theyre raisins in this. These have regular raisins.
We also have some currants and currants in English cookbooks from the time period are
actually just miniature seedless raisins from the Corinth region, and we also have some
sugar that were going to add into this recipe.

So before we get going and start mixing things,
we need to have some things happening in the background. Ive got some water boiling
here. Were going to need a pot, at least a gallon or so, so that we can boil our pudding.
We also need a pudding cloth, a piece of tightly woven fabric, something not soapy but nice
and clean. Im going to toss this in the pot and then we can start mixing.

Im just
going to toss this cloth in. Were going to leave it in here until Ive got the batter
all mixed up and ready to put inside of it. Well, lets start getting our ingredients
mixed up. Lets start with out wet ingredients.

We need 2 eggs and we dont want all of
both of them, we want actually 1 whole egg and then just the yolk from the other one.
This egg lets separate out. We just want the yolk so Im going to split this open
and separate it. There we are. So with our egg and a half here were going
to add about 4 ounces of milk, and that should be about right.

Thats half a cup. Lets
whisk this up and get these mixed well. Okay, once weve got that mixed well, were
going to set these wet ingredients aside. So for our dry ingredients, we need our mixing
bowl, were going to add about 4 ounces of flour, should be about a cup, and this
is just plain rough ground wheat flour.

Were going to add some salt, not any great quantity,
a teaspoonful or so. Were also going to add our mace, again about a teaspoon full.
The recipes arent real specific so its really a flavor, how much you want, how much
you like, and some of the ground ginger. Now lets grind up some of our fresh nutmeg. Okay, looks about right, and finally we have
about a tablespoon of sugar.

Now its time to get the butter into these
dry ingredients. Thats going to be a little bit tricky. Ive already chopped this butter
up and Im just going to put it in here and then use the spoon, mush it around and
then crumble it up to get it in there. In the period recipes, when theyre using
suet, they actually were specific about not getting the suet too well mixed so that the
suet would end up being in little pockets in the finished pudding and not spread completely
throughout it.

This, we want to get the butter pretty mixed up in here. Were going to use about 4 ounces of butter.
Okay that looks pretty good. Now its time to mix in our milk and our eggs. Now its
time to add our final ingredient here.

Were going to add our raisins and currants. Okay,
there we are, and were going to mix those in well. So, we want to get a consistency
thats sort of a stiff battery kind of a drop biscuit consistency, not too stiff and
not so runny that it runs around. If its too runny, add a little bit of flour.

If its
a little too stiff, add a little bit more milk. Youll get to about this consistency.
Lets get the bag ready to put this in. Now lets take our cloth, we just brought
it out of the hot water, you want to be kind of careful if its too hot, were going
to lay it out on the bowl here and were going to flour the inside of our bag or our
piece of cloth, so Im going to take some flour and going to make sure that the whole
inside of this is nice and floured. There we are, now we can get
our batter here and put it in.

Now lets wrap it up and we just need to
tie this off. Ive just got a little strip of fabric Im going to use to tie it. So, when were ready to put the pudding
in, you want to make sure that the water is fully boiling. Were going to drop this
pudding in.

This is a smaller size pudding. Its about a quarter of a normal recipe,
so this one should take about 2 hours and maybe as much as 3 hours to cook. I wouldnt
cook it any more than that. 2 Hours is about right.

You dont really have a good way
to know exactly when its done. I mean its not a good way to check it, so you just have
to know that this size takes about 2 hours. Thats about it. Usually if its a full
recipe size like most of the ones use a pound of flour and a pound of suet, those are much
bigger, almost a soccer ball size, those take quite a while to cook, 4 hours at least and
probably more like 5 or 6.

When our pudding is about done, its time
to work on the sauce portion and weve got a nice red ware pipkin that were going
to prepare our sauce in. Our sauce has 3 components. Weve got some sac wine which is a white
wine from Spain commonly known today as sherry. We need some sugar and then were going
to add some butter, but first lets put together the sac and the sugar and warm them up.

So, lets warm up our pipkin. Were going
to add about a cup of our sac wine. There we go, and were going to start to put in
our sugar. This is about 2 tablespoons of sugar were going to add in, and lets
get these mixed up and warmed up.

So, lets take our sac and our sugar off the fire now
and now that its warm, were going to take and were going to add our butter in
a little bit at a time. Were going to stir it in, whisk it in, its best if your butters
cold and that way it wont separate. Were going to add about 3 tablespoons of butter
just a little bit at a time and keep whisking it up. So you want to keep whisking and slowly incorporate
the butter one piece at a time.

As it gets incorporated, then you add the next little
piece and just keep whisking the whole time. Thats going to taste really good on this
pudding. Our sauce were going to set that away from the fire so it doesnt heat up
and separate. Lets get this pudding out.

Okay there it is. Okay were going to put this in cold water
here just to cool it off and now we can open it up. Okay, lets crack this open and Ill turn
it out onto a plate. Lets see, ah, here, scissors.

And now a little sauce. Mmm, this puddings really great. The sauce
really lifts it up and the raisins are really, really good in this bready kind of a pudding
mix. Very nice.

You know, Ive prepared some variations on this same basic recipe. Heres a cornmeal pudding. This ones
got butter but its a plain cornmeal pudding, like a cornmeal dumpling. Heres a pudding
that I did, its a plain bread pudding, but its got carrots in it though, and then
heres a final one over here.

Heres a suet and oatmeal. So theres a lot of different
interesting variations you can do, plain ones to go along with different meats, you can
add vegetables, you can change the grains, so theres so many interesting things you
can do with boiled puddings. I really encourage you to try one of these boiled puddings out.
Very popular for an 18th century dish. So all the things youve seen here today,
the utensils, the cooking equipment, even the clothing, all these things are available
on our website or you can get our print catalog and dont forget to follow us on Facebook
and hey, Im going to go eat the rest of this pudding..