English Christmas pudding - history and classic recipe for pudding for Christmas

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• #oranges
• #British cuisine
• #raisin
• #classic
• #cognac
• #pudding
• #Christmas
• #candied fruit
• #prunes
• #apples

Categories: Other desserts, Classics, British cuisine, Christmas

The traditional British Christmas pudding is something that no Christmas in Britain is complete without. Some people cook it themselves, often using an old family recipe, others buy it, but Christmas pudding is on every Christmas table. Moreover, they bring it in festively, pouring strong alcohol on it and setting it on fire.

The tradition of baking Christmas pudding dates back to the Middle Ages. Once upon a time, and in some families still, Christmas pudding was prepared 4 weeks before Christmas, and sometimes earlier. According to tradition, it was baked on the Sunday before the start of the pre-Christmas fast and this Sunday was called “Stirring Sunday”, because each family member, or at least each child, had to take turns stirring the mixture to prepare the pudding. Next, the pudding was prepared, and then it slowly ripened in a cool place, waiting for its time, that is, Christmas. Its taste became more elegant over time. Nowadays, few people prepare Christmas pudding so many weeks in advance. In general, even 5-7 days of ripening do their job, although you can serve it even on the day of preparation.

Having reread many recipes for Christmas pudding, from those old to those new, rereading recipes in the books of such authoritative family British cooks as Delia Smith or Merry Berry, and even revised the recipe from Nigella Lawson (but she is the last one from whom you can look for something very traditional ), as well as several other culinary specialists less respected by respectable British housewives, I have developed my own interpretation of the traditional British Christmas pudding, summarizing the information collected, and I bring this version to your attention.

Traditionally, Christmas pudding is made with beef fat. It's hard to find here. In my case, it was impossible. Many people advise replacing it with solid types of margarine, which is not acceptable for me. I don't use this kind of food waste in my kitchen. Therefore, instinctively, I replaced it with butter. Although the problem with it is that the melting point of the oil is lower than that of beef fat and it begins to melt earlier during cooking, which results in a less porous pudding than it would be with beef fat. But to minimize this problem, I first crushed the cold butter, then froze it and added it frozen to the pudding mixture, and then quickly divided it into prepared bowls and started cooking. To maintain porosity at least a little. And the pudding turned out to be quite porous. With a pleasant buttery taste. Maybe it’s better this way, since I don’t associate beef fat much with dessert.

Prepare Christmas pudding in a bowl in a water bath. There are special pudding bowls that have the appropriate shape and a wide edge under which you tie a foil-covered bowl of pudding, which helps secure this string to the bowl. In fact, you can cook it in any heatproof bowl, or even a small pot. In the recipe I describe in detail what to do and how to do it. Then you need to cool the pudding and send it to “ripening”. After which, you need to re-heat the Christmas pudding using the same method, only much shorter in time. Christmas pudding is served warm or cold, whichever you prefer.

This amount of ingredients is enough for two smaller puddings, or one large one. If you cook one large one, then you need to increase the cooking time. I also write about this in the recipe below.

Ingredients

• 450 grams of various dried fruits (I used chopped prunes, two types of raisins, dried cranberries and cherries)
• 50 grams of candied fruits (can be different)
• 150 ml cognac or rum
• 1 medium apple, peeled and grated
• Juice and zest of 1 orange
• 150 grams dark muscovado cane sugar (can be replaced with light cane sugar or regular white)
• 3 eggs
• 120 grams flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 80 grams breadcrumbs
• 1 tsp Christmas spice mix
• Cognac or rum for lighting on the day of serving
• Butter for greasing dishes
• 125 grams cold butter

1) The day before making Christmas pudding, place all the dried and candied fruits in a deep bowl. Pour in cognac and leave to steep for a day, stirring occasionally.

Grate the butter on a coarse grater and place in the freezer.

2) The next day, grease 0.5-0.6 liter pudding bowls well with butter at room temperature.

Cut a parchment circle to fit the top of the bowl. Remove the cooled butter from the freezer.

3) In a deep bowl, mix flour, spices, baking powder and breadcrumbs.

4) Beat the eggs almost until smooth in a separate bowl.

5) Place dried fruits, sugar, apples, orange juice and zest in a large bowl in which it is convenient to mix.

6) Add eggs to dried fruits and mix well.

7) Add cold butter and mix everything again.

Add the dry ingredient mixture and mix thoroughly again with a spatula.

9) As quickly as possible, while the butter is still hard, pour the mixture into prepared bowls and cover with a parchment circle.

10) Cover the top of the bowl with two layers of foil and tie tightly with kitchen string.

11) Carefully place the bowl in a deep saucepan and fill 2/3 of the bowl with cold water.

12) Cover the pan with a lid and put on medium heat, bring to a boil, put the pan with the pudding on the minimum heat that is available, and cook for 2 hours from the moment it boils. From time to time, add water, which will boil away.

NB: If you cook the pudding in one large bowl, then increase the cooking time to 3 hours.

13) After the specified time, turn off the heat and leave the Christmas pudding until it cools completely. After cooling, put the pudding to ripen in a cool, dry place, maybe a pantry or a room without heating, for at least 5 days, and preferably for two weeks, and if it’s completely traditional, you can even leave it for up to 4 weeks. Over time, the taste of the pudding becomes richer.

14) On the day of serving, place the bowl of Christmas pudding back into the deep saucepan and fill the bowl 2/3 full with cold water. Cover the pan with a lid and place over medium heat, bring to a boil, place the pan with the pudding on the lowest heat available, and cook for 1 hour from the moment it boils. (If you cook the whole mass in a large bowl, then 1.5 hours.)

15) Remove the bowl of pudding from the pan and leave for about 10 minutes. Remove cooking string, foil and parchment.

The pudding can be served warm or cold. It all depends on taste preferences.

Carefully invert the pudding onto a serving plate and serve.

At the table, pour 50-80 ml of cognac over the surface of the Christmas pudding and immediately set it on fire.

If desired, you can prepare the crème anglaise, that is, a liquid custard, before the pudding.

To do this, beat 2 yolks with 1 tsp. starch, 1/2 bag of vanilla sugar or 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract and 50 grams of sugar. Bring 300 ml of milk to a boil and pour into the yolks in a thin stream, continuing to whisk. Then put the mixture on low heat and continue cooking until thickened. The cream should have the consistency of a not too thick sauce.

Bon appetit!

See also

Stir-up Sunday

Holidays cannot be suddenly introduced “by decree,” but their attributes appear over time. For several centuries after Trinity, on the 25th Sunday of the year, an extraordinary ritual is performed. In every Anglican church they offer a prayer, which is a kind of permission to knead the pudding, and Sunday is called that - kneading. In every home, according to a family recipe, a Christmas pudding is prepared in November from a killer amount of dried fruit, nuts and lard (lard), which ripens before Christmas.

Another dessert from the star chef

List of ingredients:

Number of servings:6-8

1. Ready-made meringue, crushed into powder,
2. Wild strawberry,
3. Liquid strawberry jam,

For the pudig:

1. Milk with a fat content of 1.2 liters, fat content of at least 3.5%
2. Plain rice 200 gr,
3. 2 tbsp vanilla sugar.

Cooking method:

1. Pour the milk into the pan, because to make rice pudding, you need to boil the rice.
2. Add rice and vanilla sugar to boiled milk. Cook for at least half an hour, stirring. During this time the pudding should become thick and creamy. If the porridge thickens too much, add more milk.
3. Place the finished dish on plates, add jam, sprinkle with meringue crumbs.

This is the recipe Jamie suggests we make. This dessert can also be chocolate if you add cocoa powder. The last one in today's selection is the traditional Christmas pudding.

How we mixed the pudding

Yes, I did a symbolic kneading Sunday. The whole family participated in the actual kneading process. We even managed to make wishes on Skype! They stirred the pudding from east to west, according to British canons, in honor of the wise men and the baby Jesus.

I couldn’t find a sixpence silver coin, so I decided not to put symbols in the pudding: a ring for a wedding, a bone for long hikes and travels, a button for bachelors and old maids. But you can if you want.

While mixing, I wanted to eat the dough with a spoon! What an aroma was spreading throughout the house...

Yorkshire pudding

Another interesting pudding that is worth mentioning is Yorkshire pudding . It is prepared from batter at the same time as roast beef. The pudding pan is placed under the grill on which the meat is fried. When the mold is filled with fat dripping from the meat, the dough is poured into it and allowed to bake for about twenty minutes. A depression is formed in the center of the baked goods, into which sauce or broth is poured when ready. In Yorkshire it is customary to serve pudding with onion soup.

We cooked it...

I approached the preparation of pudding thoroughly. I prepared a form, natural snow-white fabric, and ribbon for tying (well, without ribbon!). The baby will have to lie alone for more than a month and wait in the wings.

I had the experience of making the old recipe for Spotted Dick Pudding in Lard, another iconic British dish. Look who's interested! Dick is served with the most delicate cream anglaise.

For cooking, I built a kind of water bath - I took water into a saucepan and placed a metal strainer with a comfortable handle, specially designed for such purposes.

The pudding was carefully wrapped and took what seemed like an eternity to cook. For exactly four hours we enjoyed the Christmas aromas of dried fruits and a mixture of spices.

Let's set it on fire!

“And burn it with a blue flame”... You have probably heard this well-established expression many times, and even said it yourself. Flambéing (flambé) is a method in which a scorched or burning dish is served. Actually, it is not the product itself that burns, but the strong drink that is poured over what was prepared with love. You can flambe anything, from fruits to meat.

Before you set fire to the pudding in front of your guests, it’s worth practicing on something less expensive. The very first thing that comes to mind is bananas and pancakes. There are two ways to proceed. The first is to pour the heated drink over it and set it on fire. Water the second one with the already burning drink.

Catch this sign if you want to become a professional arsonist:

Don't forget to take care of the tray, dish or plate. Do I need to remind you that you need to use fire-resistant, non-combustible materials?

Scottish haggis

There is an even more terrible dish - Scottish haggis.

Haggis

- these are boiled finely chopped lamb offal, fat, oatmeal or oatmeal, coarsely chopped onions, sage, thyme sewn into a lamb or ox stomach and cooked in the oven. Before you start your meal, be sure to drink a couple of glasses of whiskey.

This strange national dish was sung by Robert Burns , and in this regard, the Scots consider the poet’s birthday on January 25 an excellent occasion to prepare festive haggis and recite the great Ode to Haggis .

Holiday

To judge a pudding, you have to eat it.

English proverb

So, after the English Christmas pudding was cooked, I took it out, cooled it, removed the parchment layer, and soaked it in aromatic dark rum. Then she wrapped it in clean white cotton cloth, tied it with a ribbon (well, how could we live without it!), wrapped it in parchment and put it in the refrigerator.

The consistency at the very beginning was disappointing - hard and compressed. After two weeks the pudding began to change.

So, it’s time to remember all the books that we read and thought about pudding: the fantastic “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll, the intriguing “The Adventures of the Christmas Pudding” by Agatha Christie, the iconic “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens, the romantic “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte, the sad “Little Raggedy One” by James Greenwood, the fabulous Irish phantasmagoria “The Enchanted Pudding” and, of course, “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens:

“...Mrs. Cratchit left the room all alone to take the pudding out of the cauldron. She was so worried that she wanted to do it without witnesses. How come the pudding didn’t arrive! Oh, how it will fall apart when they take it out of the mold! Well, how did they steal it while they were having fun..."

Shall we cook?

Medieval variations of classic English Christmas pudding recipes

French culinary literature gives the following average version of the classic English pudding, which can be easily modified with more or less spices, replacing raisin varieties or adding other dried fruits (dried apricots, cranberries), candied fruits, or changing the type of alcohol. But its volume always remains invariably large. Stages of preparing medieval pudding, which was later also called plum pudding:

• Chop five hundred grams of market beef peri-renal fat as finely as possible.
• Wash and dry three types of raisins (without seeds): 0.5 kg each of black and golden, as well as 0.25 kg of currant.
• Grind 0.25 kg of candied citrus fruits in a blender (not too finely!). A good solution would be to use both orange and lemon and lime.
• Scald and peel 125 grams of almonds.
• Mix all ingredients in a bowl with 0.5 kg of ground vanilla crackers and 0.125 kg of wheat flour. Knead thoroughly.
• Add spices. For example, in England, a Four Spice mixture of white pepper, ginger, cloves and nutmeg (25 g) is more often used. And a similar amount of ground cinnamon.
• For stickiness, add eight chicken eggs, whisked with 0.3 l. milk.
• Pour in two full glasses of rum (500 ml) and the juice of two lemons with one teaspoon of salt.
• This yields about 4 kg of dough, which needs to be rolled into a ball, which will take about a quarter of an hour.
• Take a piece of white natural fabric (meter by meter) and carefully place a pudding ball, previously rolled in flour, on it. Wrap carefully and tie with twine.
• Place the pudding in boiling water to simmer, covered, for a period of four to four and a half hours, over as little heat as possible, adding boiling water periodically.
• When you take out the ball, it will look like slippery cottage cheese. Cool the dish to room temperature, and in the same cloth, place the pudding in a saucepan, which should be kept tightly closed in the refrigerator for 3-4 weeks, until the dessert has ripened into a hard ball.

English chocolate pudding

List of ingredients:

Number of servings: 1-2

1. Cocoa - 3 tbsp
2. Cream – 2 tbsp
3. Sugar-60 g
4. Milk-125 ml
5. Bread crumbs – 125 g
6. Butter – 50 g
7. Eggs – 2 PCs.
8. Cognac - 1 tsp
9. Grated almonds-2 tbsp
10. Flour-60 g
11. Soda – 0.5 tsp.

Cooking method:

1. For cooking recipe for British cuisine chocolate pudding separate the yolks from the whites.
2. Proteins vzbit in a lush resistant foam, and yolks to grind with sugar. In the breadcrumbs add the flour, almonds, cocoa and mix well. Further, without ceasing to interfere, gradually introduce other products.
3. In the last turn in the batter for the pudding to enter whipped whites and mix well. The dough is thick enough if not will be able to mix with a spoon or spatula, it can be done by hand.
4. Dough for chocolate pudding should be uniform. The shape of the pudding lay a foil, it is possible to take two small forms.
5. Prepare chocolate pudding for a couple of hours, if you use two small forms, the amount of time you need to cut in half.
6. Ready the cooled chocolate pudding transfer to a plate, cut, sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve.

If you wish and difficulties arise, you can cook with translation. We learned the following pudding recipe from John Warren.

Recipe: English Christmas Pudding

• Wash dried fruits and soak in 80 ml. cognac and orange juice for a day (less is possible, but not less than 12 hours)

• Beat butter with sugar.

• Add eggs one at a time.

• Dissolve honey in milk.
• Add to the dough and add sunflower oil.
• Mix.

• Add ground almonds.

• Sift flour with salt.

• Add spices.
• I use TM Haas for vanillin and cinnamon.

• Add chopped apple.

• Bread crumbs.

• Chopped ginger and soaked dry fruits.

• Mix everything.
• Grease a heat-resistant form with oil.

• Place a piece of foil on the bottom.

• Pour the dough into the mold, pressing with a spoon so as to avoid the formation of “voids” in the future cupcake.
• Level the surface.

• Place foil on the work table and place cooking paper on top. Form a “fold” approximately 2 cm high in the center of the paper and foil.
• This is done so that during the cooking process the pudding may increase slightly.

• Cover the cake so that the layer of foil is on top, press the paper and foil tightly to the edges of the pan, tie with a tight thread, trim off the “extra” foil and paper.

• Place the mold in the pan.
• Fill the pan with boiling water to about ¼ of the height of the pan.
• To cover with a lid.
• Cook on the stove over low heat for 6-8 hours.
• Add water as needed.

• Cool completely.
• Remove paper and foil.

• Using a thin, sharp object, make punctures in the cupcake and soak it in cognac (40-50 ml).
• Cover the soaked cake with clean paper and foil.
• Can be stored in a cool place for 2 months.
• Soak it with a new portion of cognac every week.

• Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.
• I have cinnamon sugar from Haas.

Bon appetit and Merry Christmas!

English pudding is characterized by a dome-shaped shape - in memory of the very first puddings, which were prepared in specially sewn fabric bags.

English pudding is always prepared in a water bath, and this lasts for several hours.

It is prepared 2-4 weeks before the holiday, and during this time it continues to ripen.

As a result, the taste becomes very strong and bright - even the most experienced sweet tooth will not eat more than one piece.

Recipe by Alena Kogotkova with my minor modifications.

Pudding according to the recipe of a famous presenter

List of ingredients:

Number of servings: 1-6

• ½ loaf of white bread
• Sugar 100 gr,
• Berries, any kind 500g,
• Black currant liqueur 50 ml.

Cooking method:

1. Pour the berries with liqueur, sprinkle with sugar and simmer over low heat.
2. Remove the crust from the bread, cut into pieces and place in the pan.
3. Place the berries, make a lid out of the bread and refrigerate.

This dish is also not difficult to prepare, and the result exceeds all expectations.

Interesting stories about Christmas pudding

If you talk about some outstanding culinary traditions of Great Britain, then the first thing that will undoubtedly appear in your mind are pictures of the traditional five o’clock tea party, which has retained its unshakable form since the Victorian era. And then it’s time to remember the second dessert, which Her Majesty Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, made especially fashionable, popularizing throughout the world the Christmas pudding already well known to her fellow citizens for several centuries.

Can classic English pudding be called a dessert? A delicacy consisting of beef fat, raisins and flour, which is cooked for several hours, creating discomfort not only in your home, but also in all your immediate neighbors. Mixed with good alcohol and a huge amount of spices, Christmas pudding should be stored for at least a month before immediate consumption, but is more appreciated by the one-year-old, easily enduring two years of storage. A large brown slippery round piece, cooked according to medieval recipes, does not always make you want to even touch it, let alone eat it.

Traditionally in England, it is customary to give just such puddings at Christmas, observing all the established canons, so the set also includes fabric soaked in its juice and aromas. Pudding is always appreciated as an expensive gift, because it is always a unique thing, made by hand. All lovers of special gastronomic sensations are recommended to try this delicious dessert, which has a gradually revealing variety of flavors. Firstly, the olfactory receptors will be pleased with the smell of rum and a rich mixture of spices, then the sweetness of a large number of raisins awaits you, and the fatty film, saturated through and through with these memorable tastes, will force you to inform those around you (within a radius of two meters) for many hours in a row. that you were lucky enough to have pudding today.

Pudding War

Yorkshire pudding and black pudding are ancient enemies. In English and Irish pubs there is such entertainment - pudding throws. This is when they try to get black pudding into Yorkshire pudding. The history of the tournament dates back to the War of the White and Scarlet Roses, when the Yorkshiremen and Lancashires fiercely opposed each other. At some point, the opponents ran out of ammunition, and the enemies began throwing food at each other.

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Another recipe: English Christmas pudding

To begin with, dried fruits and raisins need to be thoroughly washed and the water allowed to drain. Grate the zest of one lemon and one orange, grind the nuts, grate the apple and carrots on a fine grater. In some recipes I have seen the addition of the juice of one lemon. By and large, small deviations in the composition of products towards your preferences are quite acceptable.

In a large bowl, mix all the raisins, currants, chopped candied fruits, nuts, dried apricots, zest, cherries, grated apple and carrots. Mix thoroughly with a spoon.

Then add sugar, a pinch of salt, eggs, flour, crumbs, softened butter, brandy (or cognac), and aromatic spices. At this stage it is better to mix everything with your hands.

The form in which the pudding will be prepared must be thoroughly coated with oil. Ideally, this should be a heat-resistant glass form, but I don’t have one, so I took a metal bowl