Please help me decode this 1800s recipe!

[Steve Kroll]

I agree with Medtran that "do" means ditto. If you check out this wiki article, there's an example of an ad from 1833 that shows it being used.

Look under where it says "Shape":
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ditto_mark

In the case of "do do" it represents the two words "large cup" from the line above.

If you replace every instance of "do" in the recipe with a double quote character (the modern abbreviation for ditto) you'll see it makes perfect sense.

 

[di reston]

This is what I made of it:

Christmas Plum Pudding

1 pt finely grated breadcrumbs
1 cup suet, finely chopped
1 do brown sugar
1/2 do molasses
1/2 do sour milk
2 tsp ??
1/4 tea cup brandy
1 tsp each kind spice, including ???, lemon, ???
4 eggs beat separate
1 large cup raisins
1 do do currants
1small piece citron, cut fine
Fruit to be dredged in flour - also add flour to make a thick batter. Rub the crumbly bread and suet together - the water to be boiling when the steamer is put on and to continue boiling for 5 hours without stopping

Sauce for the Pudding

Butter and sugar stirred to .....on teaspoonful cornstarch with boiling (water) over it, then pour over it butter and sugar, add Brandy last

Maybe between the lot of us we can recreate this very interesting Christmas recipe and come up with a cogent version that could be used today!

I reckon this recipe would have come from a fairly well-to-do family - it's certainly not poverty cookery. They would have had a Christmas tree and certainly a roast goose on the table on Christmas Day

di reston


Enough is never as good as a feast Oscar Wilde

 

[di reston]

By the way, the first known use of the term 'ditto', with the same meaning as we know it today, was in 1639.


di reston


Enough is never as good as a feast Oscar Wilde

 

[di reston]

Sorry to bother you again - I should have mentioned that the word 'ditto' is derived from the Latin 'dicto', meaning 'same again'.


di reston


Enough is never as good as a feast Oscar Wilde

 

[BlueMoods]

Here is the only one I could find calling for bread crumbs rather than flour. I'm sure this is very close, if not that exact recipe. The Old Manor House Traditional Victorian Christmas Pudding Recipe - Food.com

 

[jd_1138]

You know language changes over time and we're talking over 100 years here. Things don't mean the same now as then, and there are a whole lot of words in use now that weren't in use then (and vice versa).

Yep, and then you have people who are from different backgrounds, different ages, different parts of the world, different education levels, etc..

At work, the new 30 year old lady (born/raised in the USA) we hired was having a hard time opening some boxes that Fed Ex delivered to the office. I gave her a new utility knife, and I said something like "this is a staple of every office worker's toolbox." She looked at me like I was crazy. "So a knife is a staple?" she said with a laugh. After a minute of talking, I found out she didn't know that staple also means "an important tool". She thought it only meant "a small piece of bent metal to hold papers together".

I used the verb "fetch" before to a 20 year old. He had never heard of "fetch" as in "bring to me". You'd think he would've encountered the word in English or literature class.

 

[Andy M.]

A friend in Florida told me he made a reference to Larry, Moe and Curly and was met with a blank stare.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

There are folks who've never heard of Pink Floyd. "The who?" "No, Pink Floyd!"

 

[Cooking Goddess]

 

[everylastbite]

Ouch.

"do" seems weird, but we use quotation marks in place of it nowadays.