I made my puddings yesterday and I think I may have made fairly bad ones. I started making my own Christmas puddings when I was in my early twenties and so I don’t use a recipe anymore, but I don’t think I put enough breadcrumbs in the ones I made yesterday and I ended up making six, including one which is the size of two.
I’d runout of brandy and soaked the fruit in ginger rum and the last of the Pimms and an ancient bottle of Croft sherry from the back of the sideboard. When I asked my husband to get some stout, he bought a bottle of coffee stout, which I thought wouldn’t matter, because the spices and black treacle would cover it up, but the fat in the nuts has absorbed the coffee flavour.
I often heat the brandy for lighting the pudding over the open coal fire in the dining room. In 2013, I lifted the pan to pour the hot brandy over the pudding and it ignited in mid air. I then spilled it all over my husband’s back. Fortunately he was not seriously hurt, though he lost quite a bit of back and shoulder hair as a result. Perhaps I was inadvertently continuing the violent tradition associated with Christmas pudding.
Tony Nunn
3 years ago
I make my own Christmas puddings to a recipe which, with slight alterations, came from my maternal grandmother. However, I find it’s only necessary to make them every other year; they will easily keep until the following Christmas providing they are occasionally anointed with a splash of rum or brandy.
Hosias Kermode
3 years ago
What a lovely piece to read on this grimly cold winter’s day. It is so comforting to think that Covid won’t necessarily last forever and these traditions and what they represent about us may survive. Thank you, Mary.
Peter KE
3 years ago
Excellent story, thank you.
J StJohn
3 years ago
good article; but lacking a key ingredient? Your recipe?
Claire D
3 years ago
I like to try and make ones without sugar, the best and sweetest was a Rich Fig Pudding (Figgy Pudding) from an old 1970s cordon bleu magazine packed with figs, raisins, dates and stem ginger soaked in brandy, served with brandy butter. It’s useful if you miss stir up Sunday and have to make one at the last minute. Delia has a version of it online, though the original has no added spice.
George I’s grandmother was Charles I’s sister Elizabeth, a popular figure in her youth, so not so very far fetched.
Ocxl Ocxl
3 years ago
I downloaded Eliza Acton`s cookery book, thank you so much for bringing it to everyones attention. I think I might make the authors christmas pudding on page 416. Looks like a challenge and I need something to cheer me a little and something to look forward to eating.
Chris Oliver
3 years ago
“Spring of Holly”? Poor sprig.
Either way, any Christmas pudding recipe is incomplete without a dash of sixpence pieces. If unobtainable, modern five pence ones will do.
Tom Hawk
3 years ago
Call me a heathen if you wil… I just buy from the supremarket.. Perhaps if I did my own it would taste better.. But thats a lot of effort.
Just had some this evening because I was in a sweet mood.
Nicholas Taylor
3 years ago
Appetising stuff, but it’s really a no-brainer to preserve a rich mix of carbohydrates and fruit for the winter when nothing grows, and scoff at least some of it when you sense the days might just be lengthening. Also, making the pudding gives the household and armies of kids something to do when it’s too wet, cold and dark to work on the farm, and the stones collapsed from the dry-stone wall are all frozen immovably together. Now, mute the sound when the sickly TV ads trying to make you mindlessly consume even more factory-made junk come on and your life is complete!
crazydiamond2310
3 years ago
I love Christmas pudding but am the only member of my family to do so. We therefore never had it at home. Once a year school dinners provided us with Christmas pudding for dessert. I regularly volunteered for seconds! Many years have gone by since then and I live on my own. I still buy myself a small Christmas pudding once a year, though it’s organic and vegan these days.
I made my puddings yesterday and I think I may have made fairly bad ones. I started making my own Christmas puddings when I was in my early twenties and so I don’t use a recipe anymore, but I don’t think I put enough breadcrumbs in the ones I made yesterday and I ended up making six, including one which is the size of two.
I’d runout of brandy and soaked the fruit in ginger rum and the last of the Pimms and an ancient bottle of Croft sherry from the back of the sideboard. When I asked my husband to get some stout, he bought a bottle of coffee stout, which I thought wouldn’t matter, because the spices and black treacle would cover it up, but the fat in the nuts has absorbed the coffee flavour.
I often heat the brandy for lighting the pudding over the open coal fire in the dining room. In 2013, I lifted the pan to pour the hot brandy over the pudding and it ignited in mid air. I then spilled it all over my husband’s back. Fortunately he was not seriously hurt, though he lost quite a bit of back and shoulder hair as a result. Perhaps I was inadvertently continuing the violent tradition associated with Christmas pudding.
I make my own Christmas puddings to a recipe which, with slight alterations, came from my maternal grandmother. However, I find it’s only necessary to make them every other year; they will easily keep until the following Christmas providing they are occasionally anointed with a splash of rum or brandy.
What a lovely piece to read on this grimly cold winter’s day. It is so comforting to think that Covid won’t necessarily last forever and these traditions and what they represent about us may survive. Thank you, Mary.
Excellent story, thank you.
good article; but lacking a key ingredient?
Your recipe?
I like to try and make ones without sugar, the best and sweetest was a Rich Fig Pudding (Figgy Pudding) from an old 1970s cordon bleu magazine packed with figs, raisins, dates and stem ginger soaked in brandy, served with brandy butter. It’s useful if you miss stir up Sunday and have to make one at the last minute. Delia has a version of it online, though the original has no added spice.
George I’s grandmother was Charles I’s sister Elizabeth, a popular figure in her youth, so not so very far fetched.
I downloaded Eliza Acton`s cookery book, thank you so much for bringing it to everyones attention. I think I might make the authors christmas pudding on page 416. Looks like a challenge and I need something to cheer me a little and something to look forward to eating.
“Spring of Holly”? Poor sprig.
Either way, any Christmas pudding recipe is incomplete without a dash of sixpence pieces. If unobtainable, modern five pence ones will do.
Call me a heathen if you wil…
I just buy from the supremarket.. Perhaps if I did my own it would taste better.. But thats a lot of effort.
Just had some this evening because I was in a sweet mood.
Appetising stuff, but it’s really a no-brainer to preserve a rich mix of carbohydrates and fruit for the winter when nothing grows, and scoff at least some of it when you sense the days might just be lengthening. Also, making the pudding gives the household and armies of kids something to do when it’s too wet, cold and dark to work on the farm, and the stones collapsed from the dry-stone wall are all frozen immovably together. Now, mute the sound when the sickly TV ads trying to make you mindlessly consume even more factory-made junk come on and your life is complete!
I love Christmas pudding but am the only member of my family to do so. We therefore never had it at home. Once a year school dinners provided us with Christmas pudding for dessert. I regularly volunteered for seconds! Many years have gone by since then and I live on my own. I still buy myself a small Christmas pudding once a year, though it’s organic and vegan these days.