Plum Pudding, A Victorian Tradition

Read any Christmastime story set in Victorian England and you’ll find plum pudding as the pinnacle of the holiday dinner. Take A Christmas Carol, for example: The pièce de résistance at the Cratchits’ Christmas feast is “the pudding, like a speckled cannonball, so hard and firm blazing in half of half-a-­quartern of ignited brandy.” Plum pudding was once a widespread tradition. Even today, some of our readers may recall with sentimental fondness the parts they played in their childhood kitchens helping to prepare their family’s version of this treasure of flavor and smell.

Making this recipe from scratch can take all day. Although it is time-consuming, you can take your time consuming it: Like all things of character and worth, plum pudding improves with age. After Christmas, it should be wrapped carefully, stowed in the pantry, and occasionally replenished with fresh brandy or rum. Properly preserved, this treat can be served six months into the new year, bringing a little Christmas spirit to early spring.

Substitutes for suet are available, but they can alter the texture, timing, and flavor of the pudding.

Conspicuously absent from this recipe are plums. Though plum has always described the fruit of the genus Prunus, by the end of the 18th century, plum had also taken on the sense of “desirable, the choicest part.” Even in Dickens’s time, a plum pudding didn’t necessarily contain any plums — everyone just wanted a slice.

Christmas Plum Pudding

(Makes 10-12 servings)

1    cup beef suet, finely chopped

1    cup plus 2 tablespoons brown sugar

1/2 cup milk

2    eggs, well beaten

1    cup currants

1    pound chopped mixed fruits (cherries, figs, lemon peel, etc.)

1    cup sliced, blanched almonds

1 1/4    cups all-purpose flour, sifted, divided

1    teaspoon baking soda

1    teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1    teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon mace

1    cup soft bread crumbs

1/2 cup brandy

Hard Sauce

1/2 cup butter

2    cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

Brandy (if desired)

To prepare pudding: Combine suet, brown sugar, milk, and eggs. Mix fruits and almonds with ¼ cup flour. Sift together remaining 1 cup flour, soda, salt, and spices. Add floured fruit, flour-spice mixture, and bread crumbs to suet mixture. Mix well (let everyone in the family give it a stir for good luck!). Turn out into well-greased, 1-quart covered pudding mold.

Cover mold with lid or wax paper and aluminum foil. Place the mold on a trivet or wire rack in a deep, lidded kettle. Pour in enough boiling water to cover half the depth of the mold and then cover kettle. Bring water to a gentle boil on low heat. Steam for 3 hours, replenishing water as needed to maintain water depth.

To prepare hard sauce: Soften butter and add a dash of salt. Beat in sugar until it’s light and fluffy. Add brandy to taste and beat thoroughly.

To serve: Turn out pudding on hot platter. Heat brandy in small saucepan and pour over pudding. Light the brandy and bring it to the table glowing with a blue halo of flame. Let the flame die out; then serve it sliced thin with hard sauce spooned over it.

Recipe reprinted from The Saturday Evening Post All-American Cookbook © SEPS

This article is featured in the November/December 2025 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.