Christmas Pudding

Most households have a recipe for Christmas pudding, quite often one which has been handed down through the generations.

Sometimes called plum pudding or figgy pudding (and immortalised in the popular West Country carol ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas’), it is traditionally served at the end of the Christmas dinner.

The Victorians established ‘Stir Up Sunday’, the fifth Sunday before Christmas, as the day when the family would get together to make the pudding, each stirring the mixture to bring luck the following year. Ingredients varied but included dried fruit, suet, eggs, breadcrumbs, flour, and alcohol. Trinkets or charms were hidden in the pudding, each signifying something different – a coin for wealth, a ring for a future marriage, a thimble for spinsterhood, a button for the bachelor.

Christmas pudding in our house usually came from Fortnum & Mason, the chicest grocery store in London. It was a family tradition left over from my parent's days of living in the centre of the city. Each year, my mother would insert the silver charms into the pudding before steaming it and serving it with brandy butter and whipped cream. My grandmother's recipe book revealed her Christmas pudding recipe. This amount makes one very large pudding so I have halved the quantities and given instructions for covering and steaming the pudding. I made two family sized puddings.

225g raisins

225g currants

225g sultanas

225g mixed candied peel

225g suet

225g breadcrumbs

225g flour

225g apples, cored, peeled, chopped or grated

225g soft brown sugar

25g ground almonds

1 tsp ground nutmeg

½ tsp mixed spice

½ tsp cinnamon

3 eggs

milk if required

75ml rum

Put the raisins, currants, sultanas, candied peel, and apples into a bowl, add the rum and leave to soak overnight.

The next day, mix the remaining ingredients together in a large bowl and add the soaked fruit. Mix together thoroughly - I used my hands for this due to the large amount!

Butter 2 pudding basins - I used a 1.2 litre basin (17cm dia) and a 750ml basin (15cm dia) - and fill with the pudding mixture. Do not overfill the basins as the puddings will expand when cooking.

To create the lid, you will need a piece of greaseproof paper and a piece of tinfoil. Your pudding needs to be watertight.

Create a pleat down the centre of the greaseproof paper and place on top of the pudding basin. This will allow the steam to expand the lid without bursting it. Then, cover with a double thickness of tinfoil and secure it tightly with a piece of string. Make a handle by threading a double length of string through the piece around the bowl and tie it on the other side. This will enable you to lift the basin out of the water once the pudding is cooked.

Stand the pudding basin into a large saucepan (put a saucer in the bottom of the pan to prevent the bottom of your basin getting too hot) and fill with water three quarters of the way up the basin. Bring to the boil, put the lid onto your saucepan and steam for 3 hours. Check the water level occasionally to make sure it hasn’t evaporated, and top up with boiling water from the kettle as required.

Once the time is up, allow to cool before removing the tinfoil and paper. Re-cover with a new sheet of greaseproof paper and tinfoil and store in an airtight container until Christmas. On Christmas Day, reheat the pudding by steaming it for about an hour.

In her Book of Household Management (1861), Mrs Beeton tells us ‘on Christmas day, a sprig of holly is usually placed in the middle of the pudding, and about a wineglassful of brandy poured around it, which, at the moment of serving, is lighted, and the pudding thus brought to the table encircled in flame’.

If the youngsters in your family are not keen on Christmas pudding, my Hot Chocolate Pudding is a welcome alternative!