19^th century

Plum Duff

In the aftermath of a deadly outbreak of cholera in the poorest boroughs of London in the summer of 1849, Henry Mayhew, an English social researcher and journalist, started to write a full and detailed description of the industrial poor throughout England for the Morning Chronicle. Two years later the series of articles were compiled into a four-volume work titled London Labour and the London Poor.

It is one of the most beautiful works on social history ever written and transports you to the tough and often dangerous streets of Victorian London. The book is a survey of the lives of labourers in the city, from street sellers of boiled puddings to prostitutes and from watercress-sellers to pie-men. The author transcribes their words to paint a vivid picture of social behaviour: what they did for a living, what they earned, what they ate and where they slept. It is a most valuable work, giving us a number of Ingredients used in street fare that are almost recipes.

One of those is for plum duff, a kind of batter pudding with raisins. ‘Duff’ is a former dialect pronunciation of ‘dough’. Baskets of plum duff were covered with a number of cloths to keep the puddings warm. The street sellers invited custom with their cry, ‘Hot plum duff, hot plum’. Mayhew notes that it was mostly children who bought their wares.

Of the Street-sellers of Plum ‘Duff’ or Dough

Plum dough is one of the street-eatables – though perhaps it is rather a violence to class it with the street-pastry – which is usually made by the vendors. It is simply a boiled plum, or currant, pudding, of the plainest description. It is sometimes made in the rounded form of the plum-pudding; but more frequently in the ‘roly-poly’ style. Hot puddings used to be of much more extensive sale in the streets. One informant told me that twenty or thirty years ago, batter, or Yorkshire pudding ‘with plums in it’, was a popular street business. The ‘plums’ as in the orthodox plum-pudding, are raisins …

Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, Vol 1, 1861

Serves 6–8

340 g (12 oz) plain (all-purpose) flour

2 teaspoons ground allspice

50 g (1¾ oz) lard or butter

55 g (2 oz) shredded suet

½ teaspoon treacle

200 ml (7 fl oz) water

70 g (2½ oz) raisins

Custard sauce, to serve

Put the flour and allspice into a large bowl. Melt the lard or butter and the suet. Add the treacle and pour the mixture into the bowl with the flour. Add the water a little at a time, mixing well to create a stiff dough. Finally add the raisins and combine well.

Layer 2 pieces of plastic wrap on a clean tea towel (dish towel) or pudding cloth. Shape the dough into a large sausage shape and place it on the plastic wrap. Fold to close and tie both ends of the sausage with kitchen string, first of the plastic wrap, then the cloth.

Place the pudding in a large saucepan of boiling water, tying both ends of the pudding to the handle so the pudding doesn’t touch the bottom of the pan. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for 2 hours.

Serve with custard sauce.