“...and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon,
over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob!”
A Christmas Carol

Plum Pudding

The famous plum pudding like the one Mrs Cratchit makes to crown the Cratchit Christmas dinner was not made of plums, but raisins.
The ‘copper’ used to boil the pudding was used the rest of the year for the Cratchit family laundry thus the Cratchit children help Tiny Tim to the wash-house ‘that he might hear the pudding singing in the copper’.

A Plum Pudding Recipe:
1 cup finely chopped beef suet
2 cups fine bread crumbs
1 cup sugar
1 cup milk
1 pint flour
1 cup seedless raisins
1 cup dried currants
1 cup chopped almonds
½ cup citron, sliced thin
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cloves
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
4 well-beaten eggs
1 tsp of baking soda dissolved in 1 tbsp warm water

Flour the fruit thoroughly.

In a large bowl, mix the eggs, sugar, spices, and salt in the milk.

Stir in the fruit, nuts, bread crumbs, and suet. Then stir in the dissolved baking soda. Then add in the flour.

Boil or steam for 4 hours.

To flame pudding:

warm ¼ cup of brandy

make a small depression in the top of the pudding

pour brandy over it

light with a match.

Dickens’ Christmas materials | A Christmas Carol | Tiny Tim’s Ailment

Smoking Bishop | Bishop Beaver College Yuletide Fruitcake | Yule be baking

Festivals of Light

Background Midi: From Oliver! - Food, Glorious Food!