800 years of Plum Pudding

By Maria Grace

"Hallo!A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper [boiler]. A smell like washing –day! That was the cloth [the pudding bag]. A smell like an eating house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding! 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..."

Charles Dickens~A Christmas Carol  

Origins of the Plum Pudding

Few foods can trace their history back through multiple centuries. Plum pudding stands out as one of those few. It began in Roman times as a pottage, a meat and vegetable concoction prepared in a large cauldron. Dried fruits, sugar and spices might be added to the mix as well.

Another ancestor to the plum pudding, porridge or frumenty appeared in the fourteenth century. A soup-like fasting dish containing meats, raisins, currants, prunes, wine and spices, it was eaten before the Christmas celebrations began. By the fifteenth century, plum pottage a soupy mix of meat, vegetables and fruit was served to start a meal.

As the seventeenth century opened, frumenty evolved into a plum pudding. Thickened with eggs, breadcrumbs, and dried fruit, the addition of beer and spirits gave it more flavor and increased its shelf life. Variants were made with white meat, though gradually the meat was omitted and replaced by suet. The root vegetables also disappeared. By 1650, the plum pudding had transformed from a main dish to a dessert, the customary one served at Christmas. Not long afterward though, plum pudding was banned by Oliver Cromwell because he believed the ritual of flaming the pudding harked back to pagan celebrations of the winter solstice.

George I, sometime called the Pudding King revived the dish in 1714 when he requested that plum pudding be served as part of his royal feast to celebrate his first Christmas in England. Subsequently it became entrenched as part of traditional holiday celebrations, taking its final form of cannon-ball of flour, fruits, suet, sugar and spices, all topped with holly in the 1830’s. In 1858 it was first dubbed the Christmas Pudding, recorded as such in Anthony Trollope's Doctore Thorne.  

Preparing plum pudding

Many households have their own recipe for Christmas pudding, some handed down through families for generations. Two sample recipes from different centuries show remarkable similarity in ingredients.

A boiled Plum Pudding (18th century)

Take a pound of suet cut in little pieces, not too fine, a pound of currants and a pound of raisins storied, eight eggs, half the whites, half a nutmeg grated and a tea spoonful of beaten ginger, a pound of flour, a pint of milk. Beat the eggs first, then half the milk. Beat them together and by degrees stir in the flour then the suet, spice and fruit and as much milk as will mix it well together very thick. Boil it five hours ~Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery made plain and easy,

Rich Plum Pudding (19^th Century)

Stone carefully one pound of the best raisins, wash and pick one pound of currants, chop very small one pound of fresh beef suet, blanch and chop small or pound two ounces of sweet almonds and one ounce of bitter ones; mix the whole well together, with one pound of sifted flour, and the same weight of crumb of bread soaked in milk, then squeezed dry and stirred with a spoon until reduced to a mash before it is mixed with the flour. Cut in small pieces two ounces each of preserved citron, orange, and lemon-peel, and add a quarter of an ounce of mixed spice; quarter of a pound of moist sugar should be put into a basin, with eight eggs, and well beaten together with a three-pronged fork; stir this with the pudding, and make it of a proper consistence with milk.

 Remember that it must not be made too thin, or the fruit will sink to the bottom, but be made to the consistence of good thick batter. Two wineglassfuls of brandy should be poured over the fruit and spice, mixed together in a basin, and allowed to stand three or four hours before the pudding is made, stirring them occasionally. It must be tied in a cloth, and will take five hours of constant boiling. When done, turn it out on a dish, sift loaf-sugar over the top, and serve it with wine-sauce in a boat, and some poured round the pudding. The pudding will be of considerable size, but half the quantity of materials, used in the same proportion, will be equally good. ~Godey's Lady's Book, Dec. 1860

 After cooking, Christmas puddings were often dried out on hooks for weeks prior to serving in order to enhance the flavor. Once dried, they were wrapped in alcohol-soaked cheese cloth and stored earthenware/crockery and placed somewhere cool for the duration. More alcohol may have been added during this period. The puddings might also have been sealed against air with suet or wax to aid in preservation. Click here for a modern recipe and instructional video.  

Plum pudding traditions

 With a food so many centuries in the making, it is not surprising to find many traditions have evolved around the making and eating of plum pudding.

The last Sunday before Advent is considered the last day on which one can make Christmas puddings since they require aging before they are served. It is sometimes known as 'Stir-up Sunday'. This is because opening words of the main prayer in the Book of Common Prayer of 1549 for that day are:

"Stir-up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." 

Choir boys parodied the prayer.

 "Stir up, we beseech thee, the pudding in the pot. And when we do get home tonight, we'll eat it up hot." 

Christmas pudding is prepared with 13 ingredients to represent Christ and the 12 apostles then it is "stirred up" all family members who must take a hand in the stirring, using a special wooden spoon (in honor of Christ's crib). The stirring must be done clockwise, from east to west to honor the journey of the Magi, with eyes shut, while making a secret wish.

After the family stirred the pudding, tiny charms might be added to the pudding to reveal their finders’ fortune. The trinkets often included a thimble (for spinsterhood or thrift), a ring (for marriage), a coin (for wealth), a miniature horseshoe or a tiny wishbone for good luck, and an anchor for safe harbor.

 When the pudding was served, a sprig of holly was placed on the top of the pudding as a reminder of Jesus' Crown of Thorns that he wore when he was killed. Flaming the pudding, as described by Dickens was believed to represent the passion of Christ and represent Jesus' love and power. It is also a key part of the theatrical aspect of the holiday celebration.

 Why is it called plum pudding?

 And the answer to the most burning question: Why is plum pudding called that when there are no plums in it? Dried plums, or prunes, were popular in pies in medieval times, but in the sixteenth and seventeenth century they began to be replaced by raisins. In the 17th century, plums referred to raisins or other fruits. The dishes made with them retain the term plum to this day.  

Resources

  An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002
 The Art of Cookery made plain and easy, Hannah Glasse.  
The Customs and Ceremonies of Britain by Charles Knightly. London:Thames and Hudson, 1986 Godey's Lady's Book, Dec. 1860
 The Folklore of World Holidays, Robert H. Griffen and Ann H. Shurgin editors, Second Edition [Gale:Detroit] 1998
 Food and Cooking in Victorian England: A History, Andrea Broomfield [Praeger:Westport CT] 2007 Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2000
 Plum Pudding History - Plum Pudding Recipe
Christmas Pudding PLUM PUDDING - CHRISTMAS PUDDING RECIPE
Christmas Foods
The Christmas Pudding Sarah Lane Traditions & History




Maria Grace is the author of Darcy's Decision and The Future Mrs. Darcy. Click here to find her books on Amazon. For more on her writing and other Random Bits of Fascination, visit her website. You can also like her on Facebook or email her.

Oh Those Victorians

by Enid Shomer

What does the phrase “Victorian Age” conjure for you? Hooped skirts and sexual repression? The industrial revolution? Darwin, Marx and Freud? Clearly it is a period rich in social change, and flavored with an air of moral supremacy that produced inevitable contradictions and hypocrisy. Because the era had such a profound impact on our own times, I have always found it fascinating. I thought I knew something about it before beginning my novel, The Twelve Rooms of the Nile, but nothing I had read prepared me for the cabinet of curiosities that I discovered.

In my novel, Florence Nightingale (the “Lady with the Lamp” and heroine of the Crimean War) and Gustave Flaubert (the author, most famously, of Madame Bovary) travel together through Egypt in 1850. In real life, they took separate, nearly-identical tours, sailing for months up and down the Nile, and visiting ancient monuments. We know that they were towed on the same boat and on the same day from Cairo to the navigable portion of the river. Flaubert records seeing an Englishwoman with a “hideous green eyeshade attached to her bonnet” and we know that Nightingale wore such a contraption.

There were other similarities. They were both in their late twenties, considered themselves failures, and were desperately unhappy. Both left an extensive written record of their travels and of their inner turmoil. The more I read, the more convinced I became that despite their obvious and striking differences, they shared a deep connection. Why were they both in a state of despair and why did they consider Egypt a “cure” for their misery? If they had met, I thought, they might have had a life-altering relationship.

Research uncovered rare tidbits about them and the Victorian period. In order not to give away any of the novel, I‘ll focus here on minor characters, and on information that fell beyond the scope or timeline of my book but which is interesting in its own right.

Before Nightingale left for Egypt, much to her family’s dismay she refused her only serious marriage proposal. Richard Monckton Milnes, her suitor, was widely known for his poetry, for writing the first biography of Keats and for being a member of Parliament. His fashionable Sunday brunches attracted everyone of import in London. But he also had a secret obsessive life known to only a few confidants. He amassed England’s largest collection of pornography (now housed in the British Library) and was also part of a group of prominent Victorian men who wrote pornography together as a hobby. They composed it round-robin style and published it under pseudonyms, always attributing the books to fictitious publishers in exotic locales—Constantinople, Cairo or Aleppo in Syria. While Florence Nightingale was daring and open-minded, I feel certain she would have been appalled.

Two other characters are Selina and Charles Bracebridge, Florence’s actual traveling companions in Egypt. A childless couple, they were Florence’s best friends and staunchest supporters, conspiring to help her achieve her goals despite the opposition of her family. Only a year before they had taken her to Italy, plucking her from one of the worst of the Nightingale family wars. But there is more to the story of these loyal friends, facts that are rarely mentioned in retellings of the Nightingale legend. Most of us know that Nightingale went to the Crimea, worked herself to a nub, became ill, nearly died, and yet managed to cut the British mortality rate by two-thirds by inventing what we recognize today as modern nursing. But how many people know that the Bracebridges went with her, facing horrific conditions and constant danger, and doing whatever scutwork she asked of them? There is no doubt in my mind that they are unsung heroes of the Crimean War.

Finally, there is Trout, the maid who accompanied Nightingale to Egypt, often serving as her chaperone. Other than a few mentions in Nightingale’s diary, the real Trout left no footprints in the historical terrain. I had to invent her from scratch.

In the Victorian Age, nearly one in four persons was “in service,” though almost none of them wrote about it. Fortunately, the maidservant Hannah Cullwick, who lived a bit later, kept a diary of her working life. For the fictional Trout, I borrowed Cullwick’s unusual relationship with a gentleman poet whom she clandestinely married. Literature about the pair mentions foot fetishism, infantilism, mysophilia, erotic gaming, ageplay, and other psycho-pathological terms. Despite these modern diagnoses, in my novel, Trout’s is a poignant love story whose eccentricities gives pause to anyone who thinks they understand Victorian attitudes toward sex.

Still on the subject of sexuality, I found significant differences between France and Britain. In Britain, even the medical textbooks were coy about the female body, using blank spaces or rough cartoons instead of realistic and anatomically correct drawings. In France, the doctors were unfettered by such Puritanical squeamishness. Again and again, I discovered diversity where I expected uniformity. Because Flaubert was French and Nightingale was English, there were opportunities to dramatize these differences, sometimes humorously, in the novel.

However, as interesting as these details are, I don’t want to give the impression that I chose to write this book for rational or intellectual reasons. What caught me by the throat and kept me going during the seven years I worked on the novel were not the resonances of the Victorian Age in our time but this: I kept thinking how amazing it would have been if these two geniuses had met. In the end, I wrote the book because I wanted to see what would happen when they did.


--Copyright 2012 by Enid Shomer


Enid Shomer won the Iowa Fiction Prize for her first collection of stories Imaginary Men, and the Florida Gold Medal for her second, Tourist Season, which was selected for Barnes & Noble’s “Discover Great New Writers” series. She is also the author of four books of poetry. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Paris Review, and many other publications. As Visiting Writer, she has taught at the University of Arkansas, Florida State University, and the Ohio State University among others. She lives in Tampa, Florida. The Twelve Rooms of the Nile is her first novel.

Flirting With Fans - A Victorian Tradition

By Karen V. Wasylowski

With so many restrictions regarding proper behavior between a lady and the gentleman of her choosing, during the Victorian Age, how was a girl ever to express her interest in a young man?  The Regency Era and it's overt sexual freedoms were a thing of the past (supposedly); nice young ladies no longer could dampen their gowns (tell me another one) to show off their lovely figures, nor could they rouge their nipples (perhaps).

Pity the poor Victorian lady.  Without the allurements allowed in the past, these pioneering women were reduced to using props.  Parasols, gloves - anything with which to flirt; these sisters of ours were desperate.  

And the most interesting, the most useful of all, was THE FAN.  Position, posture and pressure - the three keys.  Flirting with Fans was an artform.  It should be reinstated and pursued during our lifetime.  I wonder if Snookie ever considered one...?

Here are some of the popular fan signals and what they mean.  Perhaps one can practice at home on husbands?

The fan placed near the heart: “You have won my love”

A closed fan touching the right eye: “When may I be allowed to see you?”

The number of sticks shown answered the question: “At what hour?”

Threatening movements with a fan closed: “Do not be so imprudent”

Half-opened fan pressed to the lips: “You may kiss me”

Hands clasped together holding an open fan: “Forgive me”

Covering the left ear with an open fan: “Do not betray our secret”

Hiding the eyes behind an open fan: “I love you”

Shutting a fully opened fan slowly: “I promise to marry you”

Drawing the fan across the eyes: “I am sorry”

Touching the finger to the tip of the fan: “I wish to speak with you”

Letting the fan rest on the right cheek: “Yes”

Letting the fan rest on the left cheek: “No”

Opening and closing the fan several times: “You are cruel”

Dropping the fan: “We will be friends”

Fanning slowly: “I am married”

Fanning quickly: “I am engaged”

Putting the fan handle to the lips: “Kiss me”

Opening a fan wide: “Wait for me”

Placing the fan behind the head: “Do not forget me”

Placing the fan behind the head with finger extended: “Goodbye”

Fan in right hand in front of face: “Follow me”

Fan in left hand in front of face: “I am desirous of your acquaintance”

Fan held over left ear: “I wish to get rid of you”

Drawing the fan across the forehead: “You have changed”

Twirling the fan in the left hand: “We are being watched”

Twirling the fan in the right hand: “I love another”

Carrying the open fan in the right hand: “You are too willing”

Carrying the open fan in the left hand: “Come and talk to me”

Drawing the fan through the hand: “I hate you!”

Drawing the fan across the cheek: “I love you!”

Presenting the fan shut: “Do you love me?”

If there are too many here to remember I propose little cheat sheets...stuffed into white gloves...and the gloves should definitely hold onto a lovely pink parasol!

(special thanks to The Language of the Fan, by Micki Gaffney)

Karen V. Wasylowski is the author of "Darcy and Fitzwilliam: the Tale of a Gentleman and an Officer," Pride and Prejudice Continues!

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