Mrs Cratchit’s Victorian Christmas Pudding | A Christmas Carol
Mrs Cratchit’s Victorian Christmas Pudding
The customs of holidays and celebrations change as each century comes and goes, but through literature, we can look through history’s keyhole, and peek at what life was once like.
It’s hard to imagine nowadays, but in the early 1800s, Christmas popularity was declining. But thanks in part to Queen Victoria and also to writers like Washington Irving and Charles Dickens, there came a revival of Christmas traditions through the Victorian era. The plum pudding was one tradition that saw a resurgence in popularity.
Today we easily reach for a plum pudding in the supermarket, but how did they look in the Victorian era? Let’s sneak a look into Mrs Cratchit’s kitchen as she makes an old fashioned Victorian Christmas pudding.
Set A Reminder!
Traditionally plum pudding is ‘made’ on the fifth Sunday before Christmas, which gives the pudding flavours enough time to infuse and age. This day was even specifically called ‘Stir Up Sunday’ during the Victorian era, as they prepared for Advent.
What’s the difference between Christmas pudding and Christmas cake?
Christmas pudding is made of dried fruits, sugar, eggs, flour, spices, suet and brandy. In Victorian times, the more affluent you were, the more likely you were to make a richer pudding, filled with more fruit, eggs, spice and brandy. The pudding is either steamed or boiled. Before serving, brandy is poured over and set alight or is served simply with a brandy sauce. Christmas cake is baked in the oven, often made months in advance and, in some cases, is covered with icing or marzipan.
Where is the plum in the plum pudding?
Plums would have once been added in their dried form, prunes. By Victorian times, plum meant any dried fruit.
What is Mrs Cratchit’s pudding cooked in?
A floured pudding cloth boiled within a copper basin. This copper basin would have been Mrs Cratchit’s ‘wash copper’, the large water boiler used for washday, bathes and cleaning. If you’re imagining a big cooking pot, the basin was usually not removable, as it was built into a brick structure in the house.
What shape is a traditional Victorian plum pudding?
Mrs Cratchit’s pudding is clearly in the shape of a ‘speckled cannon-ball’- a firm round ball, thanks to the process of boiling in cloth. While the Christmas puddings in Eliza Acton’s 1845 cookbook are all boiled, the surrounding pudding recipes in the cookbook use a ‘thickly buttered mould or basin’. An edition of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management in 1874 shows plum pudding being served in a mould which indicates the plum pudding made its transition from boiled to steamed during the Victorian era. By 1906, we see ads in Mrs Beeton’s cookbook promoting a ‘Queen’s Pudding Boiler’. “No cloth used. Water Kept Out. Goodness Kept In.”
How early can you make a Christmas pudding? And how long can you keep a plum pudding?
Traditionally plum pudding is ‘made’ on the fifth Sunday before Christmas, which gives the pudding flavours enough time to infuse and age. This day was even specifically called ‘Stir Up Sunday’ during the Victorian era, as they prepared for Advent. Some cooks today recommend making it 2-3 months in advance, and some swear by a well-aged one-year pudding. What’s interesting is that many 1800s cookbooks don’t mention this ‘delay’ between the day you make the pudding and the day you serve. Was it just a given that everyone knew you needed to make the pudding in advance?
Historical Ingredients: Beef Suet
Beef suet, once a key ingredient in British baking due to its practicality, shelf-stability, the flavor and texture is provides a dish, is becoming less commonly used in Christmas puddings. Modern home recipes often substitute butter or vegetarian suet made from palm oil and rice flour in commercial puddings. However, butter can melt quickly, creating a denser texture. Beef suet helps retain moisture which is crucial for long cooking processes to keep pudding from drying out. Vegetarian suet mimics suet but lacks the flavor . Using beef suet is part of the tradition, so while alternatives exist, purists often argue there’s no true substitute.
How many times do I cook Christmas pudding?
Twice. Traditionally Christmas pudding is made several weeks in advance, set aside for the flavours to mature, and then re-steamed on Christmas Day. However, the fact Mrs Cratchit is concerned about the pudding not being done enough or in breaking when turning it out, possibly means she likely only cooked it once.
Quote
” But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs Cratchit left the room alone — too nervous to bear witnesses — to take the pudding up, and bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose: a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were supposed.
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. 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. Mrs Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.”
–A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
References
- Acton, Eliza. Modern Cookery for Private Families. 1845.
- Broomfield, Andrea. Food and Cooking in Victorian England. Connecticut, 2007.
- Davidson, Alan., et al. The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford University Press, 2014.
- White, Florence. Good Things in England. 1953.
Watching various productions of A Christmas Carol and began to wonder what the heck was the “pudding”. So glad to find this! Maybe will try next Christmas. Maybe.
I haven’t tried it either. But it sounds so delious. I’m not a huge fan of currents . Curious if there might be a substitute for them. Do you know if there is? I also noticed that the picture of the pudding is a lot lighter than the one Mrs. Cratchit makes do you know why?