In medieval England a pudding was traditionally made on the 25th Sunday after Trinity: it had 13 ingredients, to represent Christ and the 12 apostles, and every family member would stir it in turn from east to west to remember the Magi and their journey.

Most years, the 25th Sunday after Trinity is the Sunday before Advent begins (much easier to work out!) and this is the day which has become known as Stir-Up Sunday, not only because of the traditional collect (prayer) for that day ("Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded"), but also because it’s the day when people traditionally make their Christmas puddings.

This type of pudding benefits hugely from having a bit of time to mature before eating – it gets richer and darker, and the flavours get a chance to mingle – so making it a month or so before Christmas makes perfect sense. My mum used to make two, one for Christmas and the other for the following Easter, by which time it would be as dark as a forest and tasting deeply of medieval spices. Kept in a cool, dry place with a cover on top, they keep beautifully.

I’ve done it myself a couple of times, and I can recommend putting the time in to make your own rather than buying one. It’s a ritual which can be part of a lovely, calm build-up to Christmas, and it makes the kitchen smell wonderful. It’s not difficult, you just need to be around to keep an eye on it while it steams for hours and hours, and make sure the pan it’s sitting in doesn’t boil dry.

The basic idea of the recipe is largely unchanged since the 17th century, and there’s a lot of flexibility to it. It needs dried fruit and candied peel, spices, something sweet like sugar, treacle, molasses, or honey, something for bulk such as breadcrumbs or flour, some suet (veggie or beef/mutton), eggs, and a decent whack of alcohol, usually rum, brandy or stout. My version of my mum’s recipe is detailed below, but there are loads of others on the net and in books.

You can adapt the recipe to suit most special diets: gluten free flour and breadcrumbs work brilliantly, the recipe is free from milk products anyway, veggie suet works just as well as suet made from lamb or beef fat, leaving out the ground almonds for non-nut people won’t harm the pudding at all, honey or agave syrup can be used instead of sugar, and I guess vegan egg replacer would probably be fine, though I’ve not tried it myself.

Ingredients:
This is enough to make two puddings.
You’ll need two pudding basins, two bits of muslin big enough to tie over the top of each basin, some clean cotton string, some foil, two pans with lids which are big enough to put a pudding basin in and put the lid on.

4oz flour, 6oz breadcrumbs, 4oz sugar, the juice of two lemons, 4oz suet, 3 Bramley apples, 4oz apricots, 12oz sultanas, 4oz candied peel, 5oz currants, 3 eggs, a small glass of brandy, (2oz ground almonds optional), 1 tsp mixed spice (eg nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, mace etc).

Peel, core and grate the apples. Roughly chop the dried fruit. Mix everything together. If you want to be super-traditional you can get every member of the family to stir the mixture and make a wish. You can also add a 20p to each pudding, or a thimble or other silver charm. Then put the mix into two pudding bowls, filling them to within an inch of the top. Tie a piece of muslin cloth over the top of each bowl with the string. Put a loose cap of kitchen foil over the top of each. In each of your two pans put an inch or so of hot water. It’s also a good idea to put something into the bottom of the pan for the pudding basin to sit on, to raise it away from direct heat. I usually use takeaway chopsticks, and Mary Berry recommends metal jam-jar lids. Then put your puddings into the pans and put the lids on. Leave on a very low simmer to steam for eight hours, occasionally adding a little more hot water so the pans don’t boil dry and burn. (If you have a pressure cooker you can use this; it’ll cut the cooking time by two thirds). After the eight hours take the puddings out of the pans (be careful – it’s easy to burn yourself doing this, so maybe wait til they’ve cooled a little) and put them somewhere cool and dry and safe from mice.

Come Christmas day (or other day of pudding consumption) steam the pud as before, but this time just for one and a half to two hours. Then turn out of the basin, adorn with a sprig of holly, cover with brandy or rum and set alight. Serve with brandy or rum butter, custard, cream or ice cream if you wish. Warn any guests if you’ve put metal things in.

Enjoy!