Small and Very Light Plum Pudding is a traditional British recipe, based on Eliza Acton's recipe of 1845, for a classic plum (dried fruit) boiled pudding made from a bread, milk, suet, raisins, orange zest and eggs that's cooked in a cloth. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic British version of: Small and Very Light Plum Pudding.
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This is a traditional British recipe redacted from Eliza Acton's 1845 volume Modern Cookery, the first classic Victorian cookbook.
Original Recipe
SMALL AND VERY LIGHT PLUM PUDDING.
With three ounces of the crumb of a stale loaf finely grated and soaked in a quarter of a pint of boiling milk, mix six ounces of suet minced very small, one ounce of dry bread-crumbs, ten ounces of stoned raisins, a little salt, the grated rind of a china-orange, and three eggs, leaving out one white. Boil the pudding for two hours, and serve it with very sweet sauce ; put no sugar in it.
Modern Redaction
Ingredients:
100g fine breadcrumbs made from a stale loaf
150ml boiling milk
200g shredded suet
30g dry breadcrumbs
300g seedless raisins
pinch of salt
finely-grated zest of 1 orange
2 whole eggs
1 egg yolk
Method:
Place the 100g breadcrumbs in a bowl and pour over the boiling milk. Stir in the shredded suet, the dry breadcrumbs and the raisins then mix in the salt and orange zest. Beat the eggs and egg yolk in a bowl then stir into the pudding mix.
Take your pudding cloth and fold in two. Flour it liberally then turn the pudding mixture into the centre. Take the ends of the cloth and bring them together, so that the pudding sits rather like a cannon-ball in the middle. Tie the loose ends of the cloth securely together with string (leave plenty of string overhanging.
Bring a very large pan of water to a boil. Lower the pudding into this then tie it to the handle of the pan so that it does not sit on the base of the pan (otherwise it may burn). Add a lid, and continue to boil the pudding for 2 hours (top up the water as needed with boiling water, and ensure the pudding does not boil dry).
When cooked, remove the pudding from the pan and allow to drain a little before unwrapping and serving. Accompany with any sweet pudding sauce.
