Christmas pudding
Good tidings we bring, to you and your kin -We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Now bring us some figgy pudding and bring some out here!
~ 16 th century English carol
Traditional pudding recipe:
- 1/2 cup plus flour
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon mixed spice
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup suet
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 pound mixed dried fruit (currents, raisins and sultanas)
- 2/3 cup bread crumbs
The ingredients are mixed and steamed in a greased bowl for @ 4 hours. Traditionally coins and trinkets were dropped in as each person gave it a stir and made a wish! Served with rum or brandy sauce, or fresh cream or custard sauce….
A Christmas Carol, 1951 movie
In half a minute Mrs Cratchit entered — flushed, but smiling proudly — with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top. Oh, a wonderful pudding. Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family.
~ from A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
