Scottish Black Bun - Happy New Year!

I have never participated in Hogmanay, which is the name given to Scottish New Year celebrations, and which has its own traditions and customs. This year with my baking I am doing so, and hopefully by allowing my Black Bun into your home (only electronically unfortunately), I will bring you good fortune for the New Year.

Hogmanay customs are believed to have been brought to Scotland by Viking invaders. Coming from a more northerly latitude, and keen to mark the end of the darkest period of the year, the Norse people would celebrate the Winter Solstice (also known as Yule). The shortest day is the 21st of December, but over time the Winter Solstice and year-end festivities became united.

Everyone celebrates the start of the New Year, but the Scottish do go in for Hogmanay in a big way. Part of the reason for this is no doubt down to the fact that for 400 years Christmas festivities were banned as Popish nonsense, and therefore the Scottish had to channel all their partying into the (Pagan) end of year event instead.

Ideally your Hogmanay should go like this*. You are at home at midnight listening to the chimes of the clock, and after the final stroke of twelve the doorbell rings. When you open the front door there in the doorway is a tall, dark male stranger. I would settle for Pierce Brosnan, although he is a little grey these days, but I would still be pretty pleased to see him standing there. The dark man should be bearing symbolic gifts. This midnight visit is known as ‘first footing’, and if the ‘first foot’ across the threshold is of a dark male, this will bring the home good luck. I read that this is because if back in the 8th century you opened the day to a tall blonde guy, it may well mean that the Vikings were here for your wife and daughter. Not so lucky. Also not so welcome were the flat-footed, cross-eyed, women and redheads. I fall into both the last two categories, but, you’ll be pleased to know, neither of the former! I hope my electronic first footing will only bring you only good luck.

* That is, if you are not dancing the streets of Edinburgh, carousing with other revellers, singing the few lines of Auld Lang Syne that you are reasonably sure you remember and la-la-ing the rest.

The gifts proffered by first footers should be: a lump of coal - to represent warmth throughout the year (and the resources to buy fuel); cake (or shortbread)– for a year of plenty; and whisky – to induce year-long jollity. Black Bun is a suitable cake to receive (or offer). Black Bun is now widely served as part of the Hogmanay rituals (although Laura Mason writes in ‘Traditional Foods of Britain’ that Black Bun may originally have been produced for export to the south – i.e. England), and is representative of the wish for a year with plenty of food to eat.

So what is a Black Bun? Not what you might expect. The 'bun' is a fruit-dense cake, enriched with spices and molasses (hence the 'black"), and the whole is encased is a shortcrust pastry case. Sounds quite a heavy treat. Robert Louis Stevenson clearly thought so, as he wrote in his 1879 notes on Edinburgh life, that 'Scottish bun is a dense, black substance, inimical to life'. I have to admit that I have not previously come across a recipe quite like this, so I was intrigued to see how it would turn out.

For the cake:
200g plain flour
200g raisins
400g currants
1 tsp ground mixed spice
1 tsp ground ginger
75g dark muscovado sugar
25g molasses sugar
100g chopped mixed peel
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tbsp brandy or whisky
1 egg, lightly beaten
3 tbsp milk

For the pastry:
200g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
50g butter, chilled and cubed
50g vegetable shortening or lard, chilled and cubed

1. First make up the pastry. Put the flour, baking powder and a pinch of salt into a bowl. Add the butter and shortening and rub in until it resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in 4 tablespoons of cold water and mix to form a soft dough. Cover and leave in fridge for half an hour.
2. Preheat oven to 180C/Gas mark 4.
3. Mix all the cake ingredients together in a large bowl, and add just enough milk to moisten the mixture (it will still look pretty dry).
4. Roll out the pastry and use three-quarters of it to line the base and sides of a 900g loaf tin. Use a single piece which is large enough to drape into tin, then press and smooth out the pastry to fit.
5. Fill with the cake mixture. You need to press it down to fit it all in.
6. Dampen the edge of the pastry at the sides of the tin, and then use the remaining pastry to form a lid. Press the edges of the pastry firmly together and trim off excess pastry.
7. Bake for 2 hours, and then allow to cool in tin for 1 hour.


My recipe came from the January 2006 issue of Delicious Magazine. I found plenty of other recipes on the internet (all slightly different), but I liked the fact that the recipe in the magazine had come from someone's mum. A sure proof of success, as this must be a tried and tested family recipe. I followed the recipe pretty carefully, only substituting chopped crystallised ginger for the peel, and a couple of tablespoons of liquid molasses for the molasses sugar (none to be found locally). I also poured a little extra whisky over the top of the fruit mix, prior to popping on the 'lid'. I made sure that I rolled out the pastry nice and thin as I suspected a thick pastry crust might be a bit much. This meant I had a little pastry left over, so I decorated the top of my bun with a Scottish thistle motif. When my bun baked the top cracked a little as the cake swelled inside the pastry crust, so the thistle did a secondary job of distracting the eye from the crack. Well, I'd like to think so anyway.

I made the cake the weekend before Christmas, to allow time for maturing.



I thought my bun was quite a handsome fellow. Although heavy, he was not too hefty, and not suitably weighty for pitching at blonde cross-eyed strangers, should they come a-calling.



Sliced into my handsome golden bun revealed a darkly delicious interior. The moist fruitiness contrasted nicely with the pale flakey shell.



The cake was pleasingly moist thanks to the whisky, and it had a certain dense chewiness to it (in a good way). The addition of crystallised ginger worked well with the spices to give a kick to the dried fruits. It was not a cake you'd need a second slice of, but it was no way as stodgy as I had feared. However, if you were combining it with a dram or three of whisky, it would do a fine job of soaking up the booze.

Happy New Year!!

Deddington Pudding-Pie, Oxfordshire

Earlier this month I was in Deddington, Oxfordshire. Deddington is a small market town with many interesting old buildings, houses and much history. I was there for a family get-together, so I had little time to explore - only enough for a short walk, and to take two scene-setting photos (taken with one hand whilst straddling a struggling toddler). During my walk I found a shop selling Banbury cakes as per my previous post. The picture below shows the town hall (front left) and the parish church of St. Peter and St. Paul. It also shows how, sadly, many old country towns have become overwhelmed by the motor car. Contrast this (carefully cropped) scene, with the second image. Spot the car park.



Deddington Market Place - image taken between 1860 and 1922
http://viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk

Historically, Deddington had two annual fairs. One on the 10th of August (St. Laurence's Day) and the other held in November. This latter fair was known as the 'Pudding-Pie Fair' after the pudding- or pudden-pies sold there, and was held principally for the sale of livestock and the hiring of servants/labourers. The date was originally the 11th of November (St. Martin's Day/Martinmas), changing to the 22nd (St. Cecilia's Day), and then reverting back to the 11th of November in more recent times. The Pudding-Pie Fair was still being held at the beginning of the 20th century, but by the 1930s it had diminished and since has evolved into a fun fair. The pudding-pie is now as rare as a Deddington parking space.

The Deddington pudding-pie appears to have been a hard pastry case (the pie) with a pre-cooked filling that included fruit (the pudding), the whole was then baked. Pudding-pies are known elsewhere in the country and often had an association with Lent.

An early mention of the Deddington Pudding-Pie is in 'Notes & Queries' (1869). This records that the pies 'are made by setting up a crust composed of flour mixed with milk or water, and mutton suet melted and poured into it hot. These crusts, which are set up like meat-pie crusts, are then placed in the sun for a day or two to stiffen. They vary in size from about three to four inches in diameter, and are about one inch deep. When thoroughly hard they are filled with the same materials as plum puddings are made of, and when baked are sold at twopence, threepence and fourpence each.'

In the archive of the Deddington News, November 1976, Monica Sansome writes of the Pudding-Pie Fair, drawing on the personal reminiscences of a Mr. Lewis.

From its early days the Martinmas Fair was known as the Pudding-Pie Fair because of the pies made specially for the occasion. Mr. Lewis bought these pies in the early 1900s. They were about the size of a small pork pie, consisting of plum pudding surrounded by pastry. The pastry was made with mutton fat and formed an extremely hard crust "like thick parchment" according to Mr. Lewis, who doesn't remember them as being outstandingly palatable! He thinks they were sold for 2d and 4d depending on size.

Just after 1900 the only bakers in the village to make these pies annually were Thomas and Ruth Fowler. The family had their bakery originally on the premises of Mr. Lewis' shop, then in the Old Bakery, New Street, finally moving to Mr. and Mrs. Beardsley's house next to the Crown and Tuns in New Street... Thomas and Ruth Fowler, like their family before them, guarded the pudding-pie recipe carefully and their recipe died with them.

However, a recipe IS then supplied in this same article, courtesy of Mrs. Ella Marshall who has provided a recipe from 'Traditional English Cooking' (pbl. Angus and Robertson Ltd. 1961) This recipe creates a shortcrust pastry case, but the filling is of cooked ground rice over jam or coconut, and the whole is dusted with ground cinnamon. Quite different to the description of the pudding-pie as a plum pudding in an hardy pastry piecrust.

Shortcrust pastry:
1/2 lb. flour
4 oz. mixed lard and butter
4 tablespoons cold water

To make the filling:
Heat 1 & either 1/2 or 1/4 cups milk (it is impossible to decipher the precise measurement from the original article), add 2 rounded tablespoons caster sugar. Mix 3 level tablespoons ground rice and 1/2 (? same problem) teaspoon salt with 3 tablespoons water. Stir this into the warm milk. Cook and keep stirring until it thickens. Continue cooking "pudden" mixture for a further 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Beat two eggs in a bowl and stir into rice mixture. Flavour with 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence. Roll out pastry and line greased saucers with the pastry. Cover pastry with jam or dessicated coconut, then pour gently a little of "pudden" mixture over. Bake 20 mins. in medium oven 325F until pastry is cooked underneath. Remove from oven and if liked dust very lightly with ground cinnamon. Nowadays these could be made in an 8" flan about 2"deep. Serve hot or cold.


Born in 1903, Fred Deely, a life-long resident of Deddington, had his boyhood memories recorded by Dorothy E Clarke:

Fred once saw the famous 'Pud', which featured at Deddington's Pudd'n & Pie Fayre, held in November and continued until shortly before the Second World War. It was about 9 inches across, fruit inside, and pastry outside. The lad next to the Three Tuns - Fowler was his name - used to be a baker. He had a sister, Ruth Fowler, she was a cripple, and it was common talk she had the recipe, and when she died nobody ever found it.

Mary Van Turner, in researching 'The Story of Deddington' (1933) spoke with Ruth Fowler, holder of the secret recipe and by this date an elderly lady. From her we learn how the pies were made in the early twentieth century.

Pudding pies have not been made in Deddington for the past six years. Miss Ruth Fowler of 'the Old Bakery', whose family had the original recipe from the Bennetts, who were baking in 1852, undoubtedly made that historic delicacy just as it should be, for in sampling one I found it corresponded exactly with the jesting descriptions which every elder Deddingtonian, including Miss Fowler, delights to give.

'They say you could tie label to one and send it through the post a hundred miles - so hard it was.'

'Deddington folk were supposed to save up all the scrapings from the candle drippings in the lanterns and put them in the pudding pies.' This was also repeated to me by another baker, Mr. W. Course.

Miss Ruth Fowler, herself, quotes a story that gives a quaint, medieval flavour to their peculiar character - a King was journeying from Woodstock to Banbury through Deddington. At Woodstock they gave him gloves and at Banbury light cakes, but in Deddington something between the two, like leather but to be eaten.

Actually they contain a sort of glorified bread pudding in a very hard case. Miss Fowler told me that the outer crust has suet as an ingredient, this is filled with boiled plum pudding, the whole being afterwards baked. Once all the bakers here made them and they were sold at the Stalls. Boiled and baked like Simnel cakes, but with what a different result!


So, according to Mary Vane Turner's account, Deddington pudding-pies have not been made by local bakers since 1927. In the 1970s a version of the 'pudden pie' was baked for the Deddington Festival, held in late summer. In an archived piece from the Deddington News from June 2007, recalling an item from the Deddington Society's Newsletter dated September 1973 and focusing on the Deddington Festival held that month, it was reported that:

The highlight for gourmets at the Festival was the sale of Deddington Pudden pies specially made from a centuries-old recipe by the local baker. The pies, which were made in saucers and sold at the annual Deddington Fair many years ago, have a sweet filling of nuts, ground rice, chopped fruit and eggs and are served with cream. The baker, Mr. B. Wallin, figured in the Festival and a bread book used by his forefathers in the baking trade was displayed in the history exhibition at the parish church.

The pies described here are clearly very different to the robust pies created by the Fowlers and other Deddington bakers at the turn of the twentieth century. They certainly sound more appertising. Curiously, the only other recipe I could find for the pudding-pies is pretty close to the the description of the saucer-baked puddings. I have a sneaky suspicion that the local baker may have seen a copy of Florence White's 'Good Things in England', which is where the recipe I cooked is from. It is here called Deddington Pudden Pie, and although the 'pie' is made of puff pastry, the filling is first boiled and then baked. Perhaps the inedible pastry crust was done away with for the purpose encouraging bakers to revive the pudding.

'A Deddington Pudden Pie was.. made by Miss R. F. Fowler and exhibited at the first English Folk Cookery Exhibition... on January 16th, 1931. The following recipe was published in the Daily News in 1930.

Ingredients: Puff pastry: ground rice 4 oz. [110g]; milk 1 quart [2pints]; eggs 3; lump sugar 6 oz. [175g]; lemon 1; currants 4 oz. [110g] I baked with half of this quantity of ingredients.

Time: 10 to 15 minutes to boil and 15 to 25 minutes to bake in a moderate oven [180C/350F/Gas 4].

Method:
1. Grease some large saucers and line them with puff pastry.
2. Make the rice into a cream with 6 tablespoons of the milk.
3. Add the eggs well beaten to it.
4. Boil up the remainder of the milk with the lump sugar, and the thinly pared rind of a washed lemon.


5. When this boils add the rice mixture and keep stirring for 10 to 15 minutes; then
6. Lift out the lemon peel, and add the currants.
7. Pour into the lined saucers to within one inch and a half of the edge of the crust.
8. Bake in a moderate oven until the pastry is nicely coloured and the mixture set. They can be eaten hot or cold.

Although Florence White does not say whether she has managed to get Ruth Fowler to divulge her family recipe, I wonder if the recipe she gives, leaving aside the pastry element, is close to it. A 19th century recipe for Folkestone Pudding Pies given by Mrs. Beeton in her 'Book of Household Management'(1861) is so very close to the Deddington Pudden Pie recipe in 'Good Things in England', that I would like to think that Florence White's recipe is authentic. My theory on the rock hard pudding-pie casing is that it was not designed to be eaten, but was to transport the filling home from the fair where it could be consumed. I believe that the pastry casing on the Scottish Black Bun served a similar purpose, keeping the cake from going stale, but intended to be discarded.


I imagined that the 'pudding' would be solid, but it was a cross between a wet cheesecake and a stodgy custard tart (hmm, that will get you all rushing for the kitchen). Maybe I needed to cook the filling for longer, or maybe that was the desired consistency. I baked my pudding-pie for 35 minutes, with another 10 minutes in the oven whilst it cooled - plenty long enough to get a 'set'. Whilst baking the filling rose like a plump Chesterfield, but became the cushion favoured by the dog when it hit cold air. It wasn't unpleasant to eat, just a tad bland and a little too mealy in the mouth for my liking. On the positive side, the currants were nice and juicy and had imbibed the lemon flavouring. Maybe mid Lent or after a hard day flogging cattle it would hit the mark.

Deddington has the most comprehensive and exhaustive website of local information that I have ever come across during my web research. If you have any interest in learning more about the town and its history, then I do urge you to take a good look at www.deddington.org.uk