This History
Bakers treat comes from a recipe book found in the Hotham Estate collection
here at the History Centre [U DDHO/19/8]. The book is dated 1860 but some of
the recipes, like this one, have earlier origins:
Transcription
Prince
Albert’s Pudding
½ lb of
butter beat to a cream
½ lb of
sugar sifted fine.
5 eggs ½ lb of flour.
Cinnamon
& mace pounded
½ lb Raisins
stoned & chopped fine
The mould to
be well buttered & stewed with candid orange & lemon peel
Boil the
Pudding 3 hours & a half & serve it up with punch or wine sauce
The recipe
is thought originally to be by Eliza Acton and first appeared in ‘Modern
Cookery for Private Families’ compiled 1845. It’s not to be confused with
another Prince Albert inspired recipe for Plum Pudding, which also appeared in
Eliza Acton’s recipe book, but under the heading of ‘Christmas Pudding’.
As you can
see, there isn’t much by way of method so I improvised using the ‘measure it
out and chuck it all in a mixing bowl’ approach. There was no measurement for
the cinnamon and mace so I ‘guestimated’ half a teaspoon of cinnamon and a
teaspoon of mace. Not being able to find mace whilst buying the ingredients I
had to substitute it for ground mixed which I already had in my cupboard.
Once the
ingredients were mixed, I buttered the pudding basins (I divided the mixture in
two as I only had small basins) and layered the bottom with candied peel. Next
I added the mixture and then came the actual cooking process.
And it is
here that it might have gone a bit wrong. After three and a half hours of
steaming the puddings on an electric hob they still hadn’t cooked through. I
decided to finish them in the microwave (not historically accurate I know but
it was late and I wanted to sleep) and unfortunately might have overcooked them
as they came out quite dry...
Here’s what
people thought…
‘Looks
pretty, orangey flavour, slightly dry’
‘Lovely
flavour but maybe slightly dry’
‘Fruity and
lovely with a dash of cream’
‘Very
fruity, a bit like a fruit cake but drier’
‘Lovely
fruity taste’
‘Right
fruity but a bit dry’
So we can
recommend that the flavours of the recipe are good but you might want to
improve on my poor cooking technique. If you have a go please let us know what
you think and whether it turned out all right for you!
Claire
Weatherall,
Project Archivist
I wonder if you put the basins in a steamer? I should think the original method would be to stand them in a pan of boiling water so that the tops were above the water and then cover the pan. Covering the basins with greaseproof paper with a pleat in to allow for rising might improve the transfer of heat. This was the method my mother used when boiling/steaming her Christmas puddings. It looks an appetising recipe, I shall have to try it. Using candied peel 'caps' and slicing them into very fine shreds might be truer to the original recipe. In the transcription I think 'stewed'with the candied peel should read 'strewed'.
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