Gulf Coast breeze. [volume] (Crawfordville, Fla.) 1897-19??, 1897-12-24
EARLY FEASTlNCS.
The Puritans Would Not Hear OF Plum
Pudding.


The plum pudding that years of use
had made sacred to Christmas, was a
sweet morsel dear to epicurean mem
DRY, but never to be mentioned in q
community where n Puritanic rage
awakened at the mere mention OF any
thing connected with that "impious
Holiday of Anti-Christ."
And in those days Of privation Eng
lands crown would have been as easy
an attainment for her runaway subjects
as the rich ingredients for composing
the historic delicacy.
But private store OF raisins and
Zante currants and small boxes OF cit
ron began to accumulate in the little
corner wallcupboards, where the fru-
gal housewives kept the treasures sent
them from friends in the mother coun-
try. When church and courts sane.
toned some modest feasting, q pud-
ding was compounded, in such houses
rs could afford it, and considered by
fippant youthful partakers to be one
of the chief privileges of Thanksgiving
Day.
A whole chapter might be written
about the plum pudding of old Eng.
land, but poets and historians have
made 1t sufficiently famous, and our
attention, as loyal Americans, may
we'll be given to the almost pathetic
efforts OF the colonists to initiate it
with such ingredients as their slender
resources allowed. An early letter
from colonist says:
Although we have not as yet known
physical starvation, yet 80 seldom
have daintyes been on our board that
il was some admiration to us when the
goodwife of one of our number madea
fine pudding from meal supplied by
the Indians and the abundant berries
(whortleberries) that grow like small
plums on straight wild bushes"
There is another record, or tradi-
ton, OF pudding that was sacred to
Thanksgiving Day few years later,
when store ships more regularly
crossed to exchange the supplies of an
older civilization for such things as
the settlers could obtain from the In
dians, or manufacture among them
selves. Probably the pudding has
been changed in some respects to suit
the present day, but in the main the
recipe remains as il was handed down,
and all the descendants of one noble
Puritan family serve it invariably ut
their Thanksgiving dinners. Slices
an inch in thickness are cut from o
loaf Of homemade bread and spread
generously with butter. One of them
is laid in the bottom of q three-quart
tin pail and then dotted with twelve
raisins as impartially arranged as pos
sible. Another slice laps this, and in
Its turn receives its allotment Of rails
ms. Slice after slice is thus laid on
till the whole loaf is in the pail, into
which is then poured n custard mix
ture, made by adding twelve beaten
eggs and havoring OF salt to quart
Of milk. In the morning the pail
tightly covered, with its contents I'M
is plunged into great ket-
tie of hot water hanging upon crane
over the huge wood fire, and there left
to boil for four hours or till time for
the homogeneous boulder-like form
that the compound had resolved into,
to he slid out upon dish and served
at "the sweet end Of dinner" with q
sweet sauce made tasty with clovers
cinnamon and mace,
The pudding is palatable enough to
please any one, but when it was first
in use the bread was undoubtedly
made of rye or Indian corn, and there
must have been many times when the
supply Of raisins running short, the
perplexed cooks had to substitute
dried berries for the raisins. 1t is a
question, too, il the generous number
Of eggs had not to be lessened some