[Music]
hello
i'm kathy hiberson and i play avis
krokum for english heritage's
youtube series the victorian way
oh hello and this is annie gray
and i'm the consultant on the series
this
is our follow-up video to the lemon
cheesecakes that we made
earlier in the year
and the most common question we get
about the dishes we make
is often about the names of the dishes
because some of them are rather strange
in that the lemon cheesecakes didn't
actually have any
cheese in and this is also known as an
apple cheese but it doesn't have any
cheese in it there's no cheese
anywhere near it doesn't even taste of
cheese
here we have some plum puddings no plums
we have plum cake absolutely no plums
and sugar plums no plums i mean really
no plum whatsoever so why do
we have these strange names of dishes
when they don't have the ingredients in
them
well in the case of lemon cheesecakes
it's because the lemon cheesecake
formed a solid mass a lot like a cheese
which is the same with this the ghetto
depong
my favorite recipe gato de palm or
apple cheese ah yes so this is
also known as a gato de pom and is in
mrs crocom's cookbook
um and we've had a few comments about
that haven't we
[Music]
some of you have pointed out quite
correctly that it is not
very good french that gato de palm
should in fact be
gato oppong and you're absolutely
correct
the thing is that avis croakum copied
this down from a book by eliza acton
called modern cookery and eliza acton
called it
gato.com so we had to call it
so we're going to continue to call it
gato de palma because that's the
victorian name for it
now what about the plum cake and the
plum pudding
well these are plum puddings which today
would also be known as christmas
puddings and the plum cake
often today known as christmas cake both
of them are called plum for the same
reason
and that's that plum just meant any form
of dried fruit so
plum pudding is just a dried fruit
pudding plum cake
just a dried fruit cake the same is true
of things like plum
pottage as well which doesn't have any
plums in but does have lots of dried
fruit in
so we're going to continue a little bit
with this theme
um focusing on the plum puddings which
also known as christmas pudding
which have also been known as figgy
pudding
yes so if you want to add another layer
of confusion if you're not confused
already
plum pudding without plums in also known
as christmas pudding by mrs crocom's
time sometimes known as figgy pudding
as you will hear in the carol which one
is it we wish you a merry christmas yes
yeah we want some figgy pudding and we
want some right now i've always found
that really rude i think you should say
please
so we're going to actually make a fig
pudding with figs so figgy pudding
christmas pudding yeah slum pudding not
fig pudding no fix
right but fig pudding has figs and also
is a very nice alternative to plum
pudding
christmas pudding if you don't like it
although why wouldn't you
i don't know who doesn't like christmas
pudding so we're going to start making
now our
fig pudding with actual things
[Music]
so for this recipe you will need
three ounces or 85 grams of fresh figs
or indeed dry fix 3 ounces or 85 grams
of bread crumbs 3 ounces or 85 grams
of caster sugar a pinch each of ground
cinnamon and nutmeg
3 tablespoons of brandy or another
fortified wine
a quarter of a tablespoon of bicarbonate
of soda
85 grams or three ounces of suet
something to grease your mold we used
butter and then to serve you might want
wine sauce cream or custard now the
original recipe is from
mrs avis crocom's
notebook recipe book in fact nearly all
of the recipes that we've just shown you
in that book so you'll also find the
christmas pudding or plum pudding with
no plums
the plum cake also with nail polish no
slums
and the apple cheese no cheese also
known as gashed upon
one of my very favorites so here we have
the original
um thick pudding recite
take equal quantities of fig bread
crumbs suet
and sugar mince all up fine together
season with cinnamon nutmeg and a little
brandy put in a pinch of
sea soda carbonate soda butter a mold
and boil it for three hours or more
according to size
so it's a little vague on actual numbers
it's
very vague at the moment you might only
want to make a small pudding because
we're all having very small gatherings
but if you wanted to make an enormous
big pudding
you'd make an enormous big pudding
really all you need to do
is to weigh your figs and then weigh
everything else in proportion
but to make it easier for the modern
cook in the book we've put in a
modernized version using
actual weights and measures very good
and for this one we're going to use
fresh figs although you don't have to if
you don't want to no you can use dried
figs
personally i would soak the dried figs
either in milk
or in brandy or in ginger cordial
something like that just to sort of
give them a bit of rehydration you could
just use hot water to be honest
but i think fresh figs are more in
keeping with mrs crocker towards the end
certainly yes fresh figs like this would
have been grown by um
lord bray brooks gardeners in the hot
houses they had
hot houses that were heated by hot water
pipes and therefore they could grow
things
out of season so figs at christmas time
would be
highly highly likely and highly possible
and um
a way of showing your status so when
you're having a meal you would have
fruit and occasionally maybe vegetables
that were grown out of season to show
off that you could afford all of this
and of course the poor couldn't it was
quite a craze as well
one of the things i've always noticed
about victorian christmas menus in
particular is there's nearly always
asparagus on the table in the middle of
december and asparagus today is in
season one
april may yeah yeah yeah
but would they have tasted as nice well
no and the victorians were aware that
things out of season didn't necessarily
taste as good queen victoria who was an
avid kitchen garden visitor
would go down to the kitchen gardens
especially those at windsor and she'd go
round them and she'd taste the cherries
and she'd have a good look at all of the
vegetables
and she'd discuss with the head gardener
and then she'd write in her journal that
she felt the cherries were particularly
fine just right for serving to
the ambassador of wherever so the
victorians did know
things tasted better when they were
naturally grown at peak
but on the other hand who could resist
putting something like a pineapple on
the christmas
table let's face it a lot of things
light fruit and vegetables were cooked
anyway so that flavor difference
wouldn't have been apparent
mrs croco's cookery book is full of ways
to transform your fruit and vegetables
in interesting and
innovative ways and preserving them as
well yes yes yeah
they're preserved pineapples beautiful
like little jewels
so we're going to actually make this fig
pudding
which has figs in it in our basin which
we've lined with butter already
but you could mold it and molding was
very fashionable very
popular such as i've done with my gato
de palm
so this has been put in a mold just here
and i've also got a quince cheese
very similar ready to turn out that's in
a mold just there
so we could have used any of the molds
really yeah one of the things we used to
find when working at orderly end house
was that there's a huge dresser at
audience house and it's full of
beautiful copper molds and people would
come in and they'd go goodness me
wow didn't the victorians eat a lot of
jelly and the answer really is well
no not really because an awful lot of
the molds aren't suitable for jelly
if you've got a mold with a hole in or
something then the jelly is just going
to collapse
actually the victorians would use molds
for anything
that was moldable so the plum pudding no
plums
the gattered a palm um a set cream a
blemond
savory puddle yes i mean potted meat
if you can imagine molding it it would
go in a mold
now i've just put in here all of the
ingredients apart from the suet
i have to admit cheating i've used this
nutmeg grater which is very modern
but well this is about 200 years old and
quite frankly
we do want to eat it yes so i'm going to
just put in now the suet
and then the brandy just to moisten it
so three tablespoons of brandy
one two
three and if you don't drink you could
just put in water
or you could put in a non-alcoholic
ginger beer
or indeed you could just use something
like blackcurrant cordial
that would go quite well actually with a
big flavor wouldn't it yeah
you could use fig juice or one of those
sort of anything with a deep dark
kind of rich flavor it's really just to
give the pudding some moisture
well that looks like it's blended really
well together yeah it's quite dry for a
pudding mixture i always think
uh you look at this and think use of
pudding mixtures being a bit sloppier
but this is quite a solid pudding so
this pudding would be served at what
time in the meal
this would be towards the end of the
meal so
in a victorian dinner in the 1880s it's
quite a long meal
many many courses and you would start
with your soup and you'd go on to fish
and it would
you'd be there for several hours and
towards the end you get things like this
which are sweet dishes
but they're not dessert dessert was
fruit
it was nuts it was ice cream so you
might well have some actual figs for
your dessert
this would be a sort of sweet on treme
as it was known so
very very similar to the christmas
pudding the plum pudding which
obviously and the plum pudding would
have been eaten throughout the season
yes just for christmas very much so so
plum puddings
were incredibly symbolic in british
culture
beef and fun pudding was the symbol of
britishness and had been
way back as far as the 18th century you
often got
satires with plum pudding always with
its
characteristic cannonball shape and then
the roast beef as well
if you look at gilray or romans and or
any of the satirists they often use it
and plum pudding was eaten at pretty
much any banquet
just a spoon scrape off the back thank
you and
it was also eaten throughout the whole
of the winter
and it was pretty ubiquitous really it's
one of those things where people
today just sort of eat it at christmas
and don't really like it and
aren't really sure and look for lighter
alternatives but i think they're eating
it wrong
was she eated with cheese eat it with
cheese it was beef or even better
fry it and eat it with bacon for your
boxing day breakfast
right so this is our pudding cloth that
has been soaked
and rum out and then floured
to make sure it doesn't stick so that's
going to go around the top here
we're going to give it some space i'm
going to find the end of the string
i'm going to give it some space in the
middle there so we've got a little fold
so it can rise and then we're going to
tie it around here
of course the basin's got a lip so
we're going to make sure to second one
in there to keep it tight
handle to get it out once it's finished
and it's got to go for three hours yes
so it needs to go in at a rolling boil
for three hours it is
really important that the water
continues to boil the whole time so the
pudding cooks all the way through
and water halfway up yeah halfway up or
three quarters of the way up it's uh
it's fine as to which one and most
important thing
do not let it boil dry do not let it
boil dry terrible things ensue like
curtains on fire and burning bits of the
garden and i'm
speaking from experience obviously
anyway less of that
by the magic of television we shall now
take this away
and then come back again within seconds
but three hours will pass in youtube
time
right then moment of truth
there we are look at that
can we eat it yes i think we should
i've made some wine sauce to go with
this which is
another recipe from aegis crocom's
manuscript book and it's just
sherry and sugar syrup some lemon juice
and some apricot jam which is all boiled
together to make this sort of
rather lovely sauce it's a lot nicer
than
things like brandy butter or heavy boozy
white sauces
so this would be served traditionally
with a wine sauce or cream or custard
yeah anything you wanted to really just
need something sort of moist in it and a
bit of a flavor contrast and i can see
that you're shaking
it here's a spoon thank you
beautiful color isn't it it is i don't
see this as an alternative
to christmas pudding but then i'm a
massive fan of christmas pudding like
christmas pudding is the best thing
about christmas
apart from the plum cake the christmas
cake
um
remind me a little bit of weetabix
[Laughter]
i'd be quite interested to try it with a
really strong cheese actually
it's very sweet sauce i like it i like
the sauce
you would i don't dislike this i think
you should all try it just to see what
it's like
lots of you have cooked the recipes from
mrs cracklin's cookbook and you've been
kind enough to send us pictures
and we really really love seeing them
it's absolutely brilliant
to see these recipes from 100 or 150
years ago being brought back to life not
just by us
but by you as well so please do
keep sending them in and uh because we
love receiving them
and there we have our fig which
does have figs in it big pudding for
victorian way yes
please tag english heritage if you are
going to post your pictures to us or
indeed if you've got any other comments
they're just english heritage on
instagram or on
twitter or on facebook or anything else
that you choose to be on
please enjoy the rest of the victorian
way videos as well and i think from both
of us
all are meant to say i'm better and
better just about see that
is happy christmas merry christmas
ways to transform your fruit and
vegetables in interesting and inadequate
innovative ways then you just make an
enormous big point so we want to eat do
we
i've never had weeds you've never had
pizza pizza cheese on it
you'd spread the weeds mixed with butter
and then okay
i just forgot i said that i can't walk
into the video halfway through and then
walk out again
right professional
you