GOOSEBERRY PUDDING.—Take a quart or more of full-grown green gooseberries. Pick off the tops and tails, and as you do so, lay the gooseberries in a pan. Then pour on sufficient boiling water to scald them thoroughly, cover the pan, and let the gooseberries stand till they grow cold. Next put them into a sieve and drain off the water. While the gooseberries are cooling, prepare a paste for them. Take six ounces of fresh beef-suet; weighed after you have trimmed it, and removed the strings. Mince it as finely as possible. Sift a pound of flour into a pan, and rub the minced suet into it; adding half a pint of cold water, or barely enough to make it into a dough, and a small salt-spoon of salt. Beat the lump of dough on all sides with the rolling-pin; this will add to its lightness. Then transfer it to your paste-board, and roll it out very evenly into a circular sheet. When the gooseberries are cold, mix with them half a pound of the best brown sugar, and lay them in a heap in the middle of the sheet of paste. Close the paste over them in the manner of a large dumpling. Have ready a pot of boiling water. Dip your pudding cloth into it; shake it out; spread it open in a broad pan; and dredge it with flour. Then lay the pudding in it, and tie the cloth very firmly, but leaving room for the pudding to swell. Stop up the crevice at the tying-place with a small lump of stiff dough made of flour and water. Put the pudding into the pot, (which should be boiling hard at the time,) having placed an old plate at the bottom as a preventive to the pudding sticking there, and scorching. After it has been in fifteen minutes, turn it with a fork. If the water boils away replenish it with more hot water from a kettle. Boil the pudding three hours or more. Then take it up, dip it into cold water and turn it out into a dish. Send it to table hot, and eat it with additional sugar. If too much sugar is put in with the gooseberries at first, and boiled with them, it will render them tough. It is best to depend chiefly on sweetening them at table.
A similar pudding may be made of currants either green or ripe. They will not require scalding. The paste may be of fresh butter instead of suet.
A RAISIN PUDDING.—Stone a pound of large fine fresh raisins, and cut them in half. If using the sultana, or seedless raisins, you may leave them whole. Spread the raisins on a large flat dish; and mix with them the yellow rind of a large fresh lemon, or orange. This rind must be pared off as thin as possible, and cut into very small slips. Dredge the raisins and peel thickly with flour to prevent their sinking or clodding, tumbling them about with your hands that they may be well floured all over. Mix the juice of the lemon or orange with five or six large table-spoonfuls of sugar heaped up. Mince, as finely as possible, half a pound of beef-suet. Beat six eggs very light, and then stir into them, gradually, the suet and the sugar, in turn with six heaped table-spoonfuls of sifted flour. Then add by degrees the fruit and a powdered nutmeg. Lastly, stir in gradually a pint of rich milk. Stir the whole very hard. Scald a large square pudding-cloth; shake it out; spread it open in a deep pan; dredge it with flour; put in the pudding-mixture, and tie the cloth firmly. It should be little more than three-quarters full, that the pudding may have room to swell. Mix with flour and water a small lump of stiff dough, and plaster it on the tying-place to prevent the water getting inside. Have ready a pot full of boiling water; and put in the pudding, having laid an old plate at the bottom of the pot, to keep it from burning if it should sink. Turn the pudding several times while boiling. It should boil hard at least four hours, (five will not be too long,) and if the water boils away so as not entirely to cover the whole of the bag it must be replenished from a boiling kettle. Take up the pudding immediately before it is to go to table. Dip it in cold water for an instant, then turn it out of the cloth into a dish, and serve it up hot. Eat it with wine-sauce; or with butter and sugar beaten to a cream.
MINCE PUDDING.—Take a pound and a half of mince-meat, and sift three-quarters of a pound of flour. Beat six eggs very light, and stir into them, alternately, the mince-meat and the flour, a little at a time of each. Stir the whole very hard. Have ready a pudding-cloth dipped into a pot of boiling water, then shook out, and dredged with flour. Spread out the cloth in a large pan, and pour into it the pudding. Tie it tightly, leaving room for the pudding to swell; and stop up the tying-place with a small bit of dough made of flour and water. Put it immediately into a large pot of boiling water, having an old plate at the bottom to keep the pudding from scorching. Boil it steadily five or six hours, turning it in the pot every hour. As the water boils away, replenish it from a kettle of water that is kept boiling hard. Do not turn out the pudding till immediately before it is sent to table. Eat it with wine-sauce.
This pudding is excellent. The mince-meat is the same that is prepared for mince-pies.