The last Sunday before Advent has a name, and it is not a kind one. The old schoolchildren called it Stir-up Sunday, which was a warning, not a suggestion — on it, the family gathered round the one big bowl in the kitchen and made the Christmas pudding. Not for Sunday lunch. Not even, strictly speaking, for Christmas. For next month’s Christmas. The idea being that the thing then spent the whole of the long winter on a hook or in a tin, getting a little splash of brandy every Sunday, the way you’d water a plant you’re not entirely convinced is going to make it. By the time it came off, it had been in the family for eleven weeks, and nobody had quite got round to deciding who was going to find the coin.
The recipe is old enough to be embarrassing, which is exactly the point. Its ancestor is frumenty, a medieval porridge of boiled grain — a poor man’s pudding, basically, the kind of dish that used to get people through a winter without anyone so much as apologising for it. The thing that’s called a Christmas pudding, specifically, first gets its name in Eliza Acton’s The English Housekeeper of 1845 — which is the date you quote at parties, because 1845 sounds considered and 1390 sounds like you were reading the footnotes. By then the rules had already set: thirteen ingredients, and the whole family stirring in turn, east to west, to honour the journey of the three kings. Nobody was quite sure why east to west was the right direction for a bowl of suet, but that’s not how institutions work. You don’t interrogate the Magi. You just follow them, or they don’t.
And the coin. Somewhere in the mix, a clean threepence or sixpence disappears — the person whose serving it turns up in keeps it, for luck. In a family of four that’s one guaranteed good time and three quiet, multi-year grudges. It is, in other words, the only British institution where the rules about who gets to hold a spoon change every decade, and the one rule that has never once been broken is about the coin. Which is more than can be said for a lot of things in a British kitchen. So here’s the recipe, and it’s a good one — the kind that’s slightly odd, not madly odd, and that a mate would pass to you on the back of a napkin and swear they’d got it from someone’s grandmother, which is the highest endorsement a pudding can receive.
Ingredients
- 200g sultanas (the ones that are slightly too dry, on purpose)
- 100g currants
- 50g dried apricots, chopped small
- 50g mixed peel, if you’re brave (optional, but traditional)
- 50g breadcrumbs (the plain ones from the bakery bag, not the fancy ones)
- 50g suet — or a generous knob of cold butter from the chiller, if the suet makes you do a double take
- 50g dark brown sugar
- 2 tbsp black treacle (this is what makes it the colour it is — do not swap it for golden, that’s a different pudding with a different personality)
- 1 tbsp brandy
- 1 tsp mixed spice, with a grating of nutmeg and a pinch of cinnamon on top
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 1–2 tbsp milk, to loosen things up
- Zest of one lemon
- A clean coin, for the luck (a threepence is traditional; a tenpence does the same job if you can’t find the old ones)
Method
- Soak the fruit. Toss the sultanas, currants, apricots and peel into a bowl, add the brandy and the lemon zest, and a splash of warm water, and leave it overnight if you can — or a couple of hours in a hurry. This is the first of the soaks, and it’s the only one you get to see the point of: the dry, slightly offended fruit is just learning what time dinner is. By morning it’ll have relaxed, which is the entire point of the tradition.
- Build the base. Tip in the breadcrumbs, the suet (or your cold butter, which does the same job minus the Victorian mystique), the brown sugar, the black treacle and the whole lot of spice. Mix it properly — you want it holding together but not plaster. It should feel like the kind of mixture that’s made a decision and has no intention of apologising for it. That’s the treacle talking.
- The stir. This part cannot be rushed. Add the beaten eggs and the milk a little at a time, and here the rules kick in: everyone who’s in the room gets one turn with the spoon, going round the bowl east to west, in honour of the three kings. This is the only point in the recipe where you get to watch the family turn the making of a pudding into a queue, which is, if you think about it, the most British moment in the whole thing. Whoever goes last gets to make a wish, and it is always the same question — who’s last — which means it’s every argument the family has, but with a spoon, so it ends before it starts. Keep stirring until it’s just coming together, and no more, or you’ll work out a personal problem.
- Hide the coin. Clean it, dry it, and press it into the mix without telling anyone where. Whichever serving it lands in is that person’s, for luck. The moment you’ve done it, you’ll know the family is about to start keeping score, and you’ll have eleven weeks in which to pretend you don’t know where it went. That’s the game. That’s always been the game.
- Wrap it tight, but leave a tail. Butter a basin, push the mixture in, flatten the top, and cover it with a square of muslin or heavy foil, knotted with string — leaving a loose little tail over the edge. The tail is for the steam to have somewhere to go, which is a nice metaphor and not just for show. The pudding has to be able to breathe, but not so much that it starts telling things.
- Steam it — the long way. Sit the basin in a big pan with a tight lid, add enough boiling water to come a third of the way up the side, and let it go for six to eight hours, toping up the water every hour or so so it doesn’t dry out. This is the longest thing in the house and the most British thing in the house, because you don’t watch it. You check the water, you keep the lid down, and you go and live your life. It’s the cooking equivalent of a motorway service station — you don’t go in there to enjoy it, you go in there because it’s what you’re meant to do, and by the time you’ve left, a great deal has happened that you didn’t see.
- Put it on the hook for its Sunday soaks. When it’s done, leave it to cool, then give it a good turn and set it somewhere cool — a hook, a shelf, a tin with the lid on loose. Every Sunday until Christmas, it gets another little splash of brandy. This is the part nobody sees and the part that does the most. The brandy isn’t so much a flavouring as a way of keeping the whole thing in the family’s head — the way you’d keep a grudge going, only with a slightly better outcome. By Christmas it’ll have had more attention than most of the people in the room, which says something.
- Bring it home on the 25th. Reheat it — a good half hour in a steamer or a 180° oven, wrapped up the same way — and when it comes out, set a little brandy on the top and let it go up. The house catches its breath, the pudding catches fire, and whatever the year’s been so far, it’s officially on the home straight now. Serve it with a bit of brandy butter, or cream, or custard if the family’s feeling generous. The coin, if it’s done its job, will have turned up in exactly one bowl — and everyone who didn’t get it will now have a very calm, very specific opinion about it for the rest of the year, which is the way it’s always worked, and the way it’s meant to.
Serving note: if you’ve swapped the suet for butter, the pudding will be a shade lighter and a good deal more forgiving, which is the same deal the rest of the family gets when they stop expecting the worst. The thing keeps — the soaked, brandy-soaked version keeps well through the festive season, which is more than can be said for most British grudges, though, to be fair, it never quite catches the coin on the first try either.
