Plum pudding tastes best when it’s made days, weeks, or even months ahead of time, according to American culinary legend James Beard. “It was customary to make it in early Advent—the religious season before Christmas Day—and use it the following year,” Beard wrote when he published this recipe in 1963. “Everyone in the family was supposed to stir the pudding once for good luck.”
Also known as Christmas pudding or figgy pudding, the dish originated in medieval England and is a flexible canvas for modern cooks. Substitute ground ginger for the mace, nutmeg, or allspice. If currants are hard to come by, swap in dried cranberries, apricots, prunes, or other dried fruit. Instead of candied citron, use sugared orange zest. Suet, the hardened fat of beef, lamb, or mutton, is traditional, but you can enrich your pudding mixture with frozen vegetable shortening. Flambéing tableside is exciting but not for everyone, so feel free to skip that step and sprinkle the finished dish with white or brown sugar if you like. While Beard served his plum pudding with crème anglaise, you could swap it for hard sauce, a centuries-old British specialty sometimes called brandy butter. Or, pop open a pint of store-bought vanilla ice cream and call it a day.
