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.

Mm mm.

And the most common question we get about the dishes we make.

It's 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.

There's no cheese anywhere near.

It doesn't even taste of cheese here.

We have some plum pudding mix.

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 upon my favorite recipe, Gateau de pommes or apple cheese.

Ah yes.

So this is also known as a gateau de pommes and is in Mrs Crocker's cookbook and we've had a few comments about that.

Have we met some of you have pointed out quite correctly that it is not very good french that Gateau de pommes should in fact be ghetto Open and you're absolutely correct.

The thing is that Avis croak and copied this down from a book by Eliza Acton called modern cookery and Eliza Acton called it get it up on so we had to call it get it on.

So we're going to continue to call it gut it upon 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 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 Crow comes time sometimes known as figgy pudding as you'll hear in the carol, Which one is it?

We wish you a merry christmas 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.

Some pudding.

Not fig pudding, no fix.

Right.

But fig pudding has fixed and also is a very nice alternative to plum pudding christmas pudding if you don't like it.

Although why wouldn't you don't know who doesn't like christmas pudding?

So we're gonna start making now our fig pudding with actual figs.

So for this recipe you will need three ounces or 85 g of fresh figs.

Or indeed, dry fixed three ounces or 85 g of breadcrumbs, three ounces or 85 g of caster sugar, a pinch each of ground cinnamon and nutmeg, three tablespoons of brandy or another fortified wine, a quarter of a tablespoon of bicarbonate of soda, 85 g or three ounces of Suitt 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 Crew comes notebook recipe book.

In fact, nearly all of the recipes that we've just shown her in that book.

So you'll also find the christmas pudding or plum pudding with no plums.

The plum cake also with no problems.

And the apple cheese, no cheese also known as Guest upon one of my very favorites.

So here we have the original um big pudding receipt take equal quantities of fig bread crumbs.

Suitt and sugar means all our fine together seasoned with cinnamon, nutmeg and a little brandy put in a pinch of sea soda, bicarbonate 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 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 know, you can use dry figs personally.

I would soak the dried figs either in milk or in brandy or in ginger cordial or 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 craig coming toward the end.

Certainly, yes, fresh figs like this would have been grown by Lord gray bricks, 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, christmas time would be highly likely 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 it with this and of course the poor couldn't.

It was quite crazy 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.

What april may?

Yeah.

Yeah, but with their taste is as nice.

Well, no and the Victorians were aware that things out of season didn't necessarily taste as good.

Queen victoria's 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 taste the cherries and should have a good look at all of the vegetables.

And she discussed 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 no 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 like fruit and vegetables were cooked anyway so that flavor difference wouldn't have been apparent.

Mrs coconuts cookery because full of ways to transform your fruit and vegetables in interesting and innovative ways of preserving them with Yes, the older preserved pineapples, beautiful 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 moldings very fashionable.

Very popular, such as I've done with my ghetto dope on.

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 them old.

Yeah.

One of the things we used to find when working at Audley End House was that there's a huge dresser that audience house and it's full of beautiful copper mold and people would come in and they go, oh 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 of the whole in or something, then the jelly is just going to collapse.

Actually, The Victorians would use molds for anything that was Moldable.

So the prompting.

No plums, the battered upon a set cream of LeMond savory pudding.

Yes, favorite thing.

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 Sioux.

It, I have to admit to 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.

So I'm gonna just put in now the sweet and then brandi just to moisten it 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 black currant cordial.

That would be quite well actually with a big flavor, wasn't it?

Yeah, you could you think due to one of those sort of anything with a deep, dark kind of rich flavor, it's really just to get the pudding some moisture.

Okay, well that looks like it's blended really well together.

Yeah, it's quite dry for a pudding mixture.

I always think you look at this and think use of pudding mixture is 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're going to fish and you be there for several hours 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 creams.

You might well have some actual thinks your dessert, This would be a sort of sweet entre me 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 christmas very much say so, plum puddings were incredibly symbolic in british culture, Beef and plum pudding was the similar Britishness and had been way back as far as the 18th century, you often got satires with plum pudding boys with its characteristic cannonball shape and then the roast beef as well, if you Gil ray or romans or any of the satirists, they often use it.

And plum pudding was eaten at pretty much any banquet.

Just a spoon to scrape off the back thank you.

And it was also eaten throughout the whole of the winter and it was pretty ubiquitous or it really it's one of those things where people today just sort of eating at christmas and I don't really like it and aren't really sure and look for lighter alternatives, but I think they're eating it wrong, we should eat it with cheese, eating cheese it with beef or even better fry it and eat it with bacon for your Boxing Day breakfast.

Yeah.

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.

I'm gonna give it some space going to find the end of the string.

You're gonna give it some space in the middle class, You've got a little fold so it can rise.

And then we're gonna turn it around here.

It's kind of course the basin's got lip.

So we're gonna make sure to second one in there to keep it tight.

I'm going to get it out once it's finished and it's got going 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 halfway up or three quarters of the way up it.

So it's fine as to which one most important thing.

Do not let it boil dry.

Do not let it boil dry terrible things into like curtains on fire and burning bits of the garden.

And I'm speaking from experience obviously.

Anyway, lets a bat by the magic of television, we shall now take us away and then come back again within seconds.

But three hours will pass on youtube time.

Right then.

Moment of truth.

There we are.

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 Avis programs manuscript book and it's just sherry and a 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 bottle called 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 moisture in it and to be a bit of a flavor contrast and I can see that you're shaking.

Try it.

Here's a spoon, thank you.

Beautiful color isn't it?

Is?

I don't see this as an alternative to christmas pudding, but then I'm a massive fan of christmas pudding.

Christmas pudding is the best thing about christmas, apart from the Bluhm cake, christmas cake.

Um Mind a little bit of Weetabix.

I'm quite interested to try it with a really strong cheese actually.

It's very sweet sauce.

I like it.

I like the sauce.

He would I don't dislike this.

I think you should all try it to see what it's like.

Lots of you have cooked the recipes from mrs Clinton'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 because we love receiving them.

And there we have our fig which does have fixed in its people 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.