Summer Pudding

the glory of the English soft-fruit season: raspberries and mixed summer berries cooked briefly with sugar and their scarlet juice soaked overnight through a case of white bread, turned out to serve with thick cream — a pudding of no oven and no pastry

Origin: England

From the journey of Raspberry.

The summer pudding is one of the great expressions of the English soft-fruit season and one of the cleverest of all thrifty puddings, for it requires neither oven nor pastry nor any skill beyond patience. Its principle is simple and inspired: a bowl is lined with slices of white bread, filled with soft summer fruits that have been cooked just long enough to release their juice, capped with more bread, weighted, and left overnight, so that the crimson juice soaks entirely through the bread and sets it, when turned out, into a glistening scarlet dome that holds its shape and bleeds fruit at the first spoon. The dish appears in English cookery from the later nineteenth century, at first under the name 'hydropathic pudding', devised for the spa and health resorts where pastry was thought too rich; freed of that austere origin, it became simply the summer pudding, the definitive way to eat the raspberries, redcurrants, and other soft fruits of the English July. The raspberry is its foundation and its dominant flavour; redcurrants lend the necessary sharpness and pectin, and blackcurrants, strawberries, or blackberries make up the rest. Good white bread, a day or two old, is essential, and so is the overnight soak: this is a pudding that cannot be hurried.

Ingredients

Fruit

400 g raspberries
150 g redcurrants
150 g blackcurrants (or blackberries)
200 g strawberries, hulled and quartered
150 g caster sugar
2 tbsp water

Assembly

7 slices good white bread (a day or two old), crusts removed

To Serve

150 ml thick double cream or clotted cream, to serve

Method

Put the redcurrants, blackcurrants, and strawberries into a wide pan with the sugar and water. Warm over a low heat, stirring gently, for 3 to 4 minutes, just until the sugar dissolves and the fruit begins to release its juice. Take off the heat, add the raspberries, and stir once. The raspberries should soften in the residual heat but keep their shape.
Line a 1-litre pudding basin with cling film, leaving plenty of overhang. Cut a round of bread to fit the bottom of the basin, then cut the remaining slices into wedges and use them to line the sides, overlapping slightly so there are no gaps. Trim to fit.
Spoon the fruit and most of its juice into the bread-lined basin, reserving a few tablespoons of juice. Cap the top completely with the remaining bread, trimming to fit so the fruit is fully enclosed.
Fold the overhanging cling film over the top. Set a small plate or saucer that fits just inside the rim on top, and weigh it down with a tin or two. Refrigerate overnight, or for at least 8 hours.
To serve, unfold the cling film, invert a serving plate over the basin, and turn out the pudding. Peel away the film and brush any pale patches of bread with the reserved juice until the whole dome is an even, deep scarlet. Serve in thick wedges with plenty of cold double or clotted cream.

Notes

The proportions of fruit are flexible, but raspberries should always dominate and there must be enough sharp currant to balance the sweetness; an all-strawberry pudding is too bland and too watery. Frozen mixed summer fruit works well out of season. The bread must be a decent close-textured white loaf, slightly stale so it holds together; fresh, fluffy bread turns to paste. Some cooks add a splash of crème de cassis or framboise to the fruit. The pudding keeps for two days in the fridge and improves on the first.

The Gastrographer

Name: Summer Pudding
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 5 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: England
Ingredients: 400 g raspberries; 150 g redcurrants; 150 g blackcurrants (or blackberries); 200 g strawberries, hulled and quartered; 150 g caster sugar; 2 tbsp water; 7 slices good white bread (a day or two old), crusts removed; 150 ml thick double cream or clotted cream, to serve

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control