I got the idea because my daughter made plans to visit us for the Christmas holiday season. She's not a huge fan of turkey, so my wife and I decided to cook a goose as the centerpiece of our meal. If you're making a Christmas Goose, the temptation to go Full Dickens and have a Christmas Pudding to follow is very strong, and I gave in. Plus I'm interested in food history and wanted to try it.
My recipe was from the extremely useful historical cookbook Lobscouse & Spotted Dog, by Grossman and Thomas. It's a solidly researched and fearlessly kitchen-tested companion to Patrick O'Brian's novels about Captain Aubrey and Dr. Maturin in the Royal Navy of Nelson's era. If you want to know how to cook a rat, this is the book to consult. Since Captain Aubrey is a huge fan of English pudding in all its forms, the book has thirty-odd different pudding recipes, ranging from "Figgy-Dowdy" to "Drowned Baby" to "Floating Islands."
A useful technique when trying an unfamiliar recipe, especially a historical one, is to find as many versions as possible and compare them. This gives one a sense of which ingredients are central to the dish, which are optional, and what the core techniques are for cooking. So I did some online research and consulted some of my other old cookbooks.
The core of a Christmas Pudding (aka a Plum Pudding because it contains raisins and the English don't know how to speak their own language) is a mix of beef suet, flour, sugar, breadcrumbs and eggs; packed with dried fruit, chopped nuts, and spices. And booze. The exact fruits and spices vary somewhat from one recipe to another.
Which was good, because getting hold of all of them was quite a chore, and some proved impossible to find. I had all the spices (cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, and clove), so that part was easy enough. Suet came from Sutter Meats in Northampton. Raisins, currants, and almonds were no problem. Candied orange peel had to be ordered via Amazon, and candied citron was simply unavailable to me. The fact that we were in the middle of a global supply chain crisis may have had something to do with that.
I began accumulating the Christmas Pudding ingredients in October, and actually prepared it in early November. This may seem like a long lead time, but Grossman and Thomas recommend getting your pudding ready a whole year in advance. Other recipes tended to center around six to eight weeks prior to serving, so I went with that.
The actual cooking is simple but time-consuming. You mix everything up together, put it in a pudding-basin (I used a metal bowl), and then steam it in boiling water for five hours. Extract it from the pot — my cookbook authors went into a certain amount of technical advice about getting the pudding out of the boiling water but I simply let it cool down before removing — and then store for two to twelve months. Give it a shot of booze every few weeks.
On the big day, heat it up with a couple of hours of steaming, then turn out onto a serving dish. Heat up a few ounces of brandy just to boiling, set it on fire, and pour the flaming liquid over the pudding. Because what dessert isn't improved by flaming brandy, really? Here's what it looked like.
So, I hear you ask, how is it? It's good. I liked it a lot — but then I'm also someone who loves mince pies and old-fashioned sangria. Raisins and cloves and citrus are a flavor combination I love in just about any form.
As one can see from this close-up view, the pudding is mostly fruit. The suet-flour-egg mixture is just a matrix to hold it all together. It goes very well with red wine, less so with champagne. We accompanied ours with vanilla ice cream, a combo I recommend.
It made a nice finish to a meal built around a roast goose. I suspect it would also go well with beef or game. Probably not a good Thanksgiving dessert — too much like the stuffing and cranberries anyway, plus everybody's expecting pie. It's kosher, so you could have it for Hanukkah. Since I've got a quarter-pound of suet left over, I may make it again. Try it yourself — you've just about got enough time for next Christmas if you get cracking.
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