Boiled Plumb Pudding
Submitted by brsugar
Traditional British boiled plum pudding wrapped in muslin and simmered for 5 hours. Loaded with suet, currants, raisins, and warm spices, then doused in rum. Serves 8.
YIELD
8 servingsPREP
20 minCOOK
20 minREADY
40 minThis is a proper plum pudding, the kind that Dickens wrote about and your great-grandmother might have made if she came from the British Isles. No shortcuts, no compromises, and worth every minute of the five-hour boil.
Suet, currants, raisins, breadcrumbs, flour, eggs, and a generous hand of nutmeg and ginger all get mixed into a thick batter. The whole lot goes into a floured muslin cloth, tied into a ball, and suspended in a pot of boiling water for the better part of an afternoon.
What emerges is dark, dense, and deeply spiced, with a sticky richness that only improves as it ages. Wrap it in fresh muslin, douse it weekly with rum or brandy, and it’ll keep for months, getting better all the while.
Kitchen Tips
- Flour the muslin cloth inside and out. This creates a seal that keeps water from seeping in and making the pudding soggy.
- Leave room in the cloth for expansion. The pudding will swell as it cooks.
- Check the water level every 30 minutes or so. A pudding that boils dry is a pudding ruined.
- Start this at least a month before Christmas for the richest flavor. The weekly rum or brandy feeds transform it into something extraordinary.
- Serve warm with brandy butter, custard, or hard sauce.
Ingredients
Directions
Cut suet in little pieces.
Beat the eggs, then half the milk, beat them together, and by degrees stir in the flour and bread together, then the suet, spice and fruit, and as much milk as will mix it all well together and very thick.
Wet a large muslin cloth (3 foot square) and rub with flour inside and out.
Drape it into a bowl large enough to hold the pudding mix.
Pour the mixture in and tie up the muslin ends tightly, leaving the pudding in a large ball with some room for expansion.
When tying the neck, leave long enough ends on the cords so you can knot a loop.
Suspend the pudding in a large kettle or stock pot of boiling water, hanging the loop from a long wooden spoon straddling the open top of the pot, and boil five hours.
Check water level frequently.
It evaporates quickly.
When done, wrap in a clean muslin cloth and douse with ¼ cup rum or brandy.
Check weekly and add additional rum or brandy if it appears dry.
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