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CHRISTMAS PUDDING

(English Plum Pudding)

Fannie Merritt Farmer Boston Cooking-School Cookbook (1896)
 

INGREDIENTS

1/2 lb. Stale Bread Crumbs
1 cup Scalded Milk
1/4 lb. Sugar
4 Eggs
1/2 lb. Raisins, seeded, cut in pieces, and floured
1/4 lb. Currants
1/4 lb. Finely Chopped Figs
2 oz. Finely Cut Citron
1/2 lb. Suet
1/4 cup Wine and Brandy mixed
1/2 Grated Nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/3 teaspoon Clove
1/3 teaspoon Mace
 

DIRECTIONS

Soak bread crumbs in milk, let stand until cool, add sugar, beaten yolks of eggs, raisins, currants, figs, and citron; chop suet, and cream by using the hand; combine mixtures, then add wine, brandy, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, mace, and whites of eggs beaten stiff. Turn into buttered mould, cover, and steam six hours.
 

email Dec, 2006
To Chef James -
LOVE your work!  My grandmother swore by Fannie Farmer. Grandma being from Chicago she felt a special affinity for Fannie. My grandmother taught me how to make it.  (Carefully flouring the reconstituted raisins so they would not "float". She filled the cans 2/3 full and covered with quadruple folded wax paper tied with string).
One year when all the family was gathered for Christmas and I couldn't be there, I FED EX'd the pudding.  I must add that we used a nutmeg/butter sauce that was wonderful and enhanced  the flavors of the pudding, which for me made them tolerable) Along with the plum pudding I sent a ziplock with the dry ingredients and instructions for making the sauce.  They all raved as it bright back memories of their childhood and Mama's Suet Pudding. 
By the way I do genealogy and when I am stumped to find where a mother might be from I look at the recipes for that part of the family.  When I was in Virginia it was as though I was at my grandmother's grandmother's table again! 

Thanks for all you share,  Judy A.
 

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