A Pudding Before Advent: Burnt Sugar, Borrowed Handwriting and a Knock at Number 14

There are some kitchen jobs that feel less like cooking and more like agreeing to a dare. Making a Christmas pudding from scratch is one of them. It involves suet, string, a basin, several hours of steaming and a level of faith in the process that is hard to summon on a grey Friday afternoon.

This year Stir-up Sunday falls on 22 November. We know that because we checked, twice, and then decided to make our pudding early anyway. The reason was not romantic. Joe is working the weekend of the 22nd, and I had a Friday off, and the dried fruit had been sitting in the cupboard since a misguided flapjack phase in September. So we rolled up our sleeves on 13 November, a week before the traditional day, and told ourselves it counted as a rehearsal.

It very nearly did not count at all.

The Sunday that stirs the whole house

Stir-up Sunday takes its name from the old Book of Common Prayer collect read on the last Sunday before Advent. It begins, “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people.” Victorian households heard that line and apparently thought: right, time to get the pudding on. The custom stuck. The last Sunday before Advent became the day for mixing the Christmas pudding, with everyone in the house taking a turn to stir and make a wish.

There are all sorts of little traditions attached to it. Stir east to west, in honour of the Wise Men. Use thirteen ingredients, one for Jesus and the twelve disciples. Pop in a coin for luck, though we decided against that on the grounds that neither of us fancied explaining a dental appointment to A&E. The point is not really the rules. The point is that a pudding becomes a small event, shared out among whoever is in the kitchen.

We had no family recipe. My mum’s approach to Christmas pudding was to buy a good one and take the credit with a warm smile. Joe’s nan made one every year, but the recipe went with her, and all we have is a vague memory of stout and a lot of candied peel. So we were winging it, right up until a piece of paper appeared through the letterbox.

The recipe through the fence

Doreen at number 14 has lived on our street longer than we have lived in this town. We know her by sight: a blue coat, a wheeled shopping trolley, a firm nod when we put the bins out. We had never had a proper conversation. Then, a few weeks ago, I was wrestling a stubborn rose bush by the front wall and she stopped to tell me I was pruning it at the wrong time of year. She was right. She was also kind about it.

A few days later, an envelope came through the door with our house number on it. Inside was a recipe card, handwritten in blue biro, with a note: “Saw your lights go on early. Thought you might like this. It was my mother’s. Don’t skip the breadcrumbs.”

The card was a beautiful thing. Splatters of old mixture, a corner turned down, the word “suet” underlined twice. It called for currants, sultanas, raisins, candied peel, brown sugar, breadcrumbs, plain flour, mixed spice, nutmeg, eggs, stout, marmalade and a grated apple. Thirteen ingredients, as it turned out, though Doreen had never mentioned the disciples. Her only warning was written at the bottom in capitals: STEAM IT PROPERLY.

We decided to make it on the Friday and knock on her door afterwards to say thank you. That was the plan, anyway.

Suet, steam and a minor sugar incident

If you have never handled suet, it is a strange, floury, faintly old-fashioned ingredient that makes you feel like you have stepped into a 1970s church kitchen. We weighed everything out on the kitchen scales, argued gently about whether the apple should be grated or chopped, and used a mixing bowl that is probably older than both of us.

The first stir is supposed to be a moment of calm. Ours was not. The mixture was stiff, the breadcrumbs went everywhere, and the smell of mixed spice made the whole house feel like a shop that sells candles and expensive jam. We each took a turn with the wooden spoon and made a wish. Joe wished for a quiet Christmas. I wished for the pudding not to poison anyone. Then we got on with the steaming.

This is where the burnt sugar happened. I had decided, in my wisdom, to caramelise a little sugar for the top, because the recipe did not say to and I thought I knew better. The sugar went from golden to black in the time it took me to answer a text. Smoke curled up, the smoke alarm gave a short, judgmental chirp, and Joe opened the back door while I stood there holding a pan of something that looked like tar.

We scraped it into the bin, opened every window, and carried on. The pudding went into its buttered basin, got its parchment lid and foil hat, and was tied with string like a small, festive parcel. It steamed for hours. The kitchen windows fogged up. The radio burbled away. By the time it came out, we were both slightly giddy from the heat and the smell and the sheer relief of having made something.

The knock at number 14

We waited until the pudding had cooled, then walked down the path with the recipe card and a small slice wrapped in foil. Doreen opened the door in her blue cardigan and looked at the foil parcel with suspicion, then delight.

“You made it?” she said. “Already?”

We explained about Joe’s shift and the early Stir-up Sunday and the burnt sugar. She laughed at that, properly laughed, and said her mother had once set fire to a tea towel doing exactly the same thing. Then she invited us in for a cup of tea, and we sat in her front room with the gas fire on and talked about her mum, our street, and the year the whole road lost power on Christmas Eve.

It was not a grand afternoon. There were no fairy lights, no mulled wine, no perfect table. There was a slightly wonky pudding in a basin on our kitchen counter and a neighbour who now knows our names. That felt like the whole point of Stir-up Sunday, really. You stir the mixture, you make a wish, and sometimes the wish comes true in a smaller, warmer shape than you expected.

We are going to steam it again on Christmas Day, as Doreen instructed, and serve it with custard that I will probably buy rather than make. We will knock on number 14 beforehand and drop off a slice. And next year, when Stir-up Sunday comes around on 22 November, we will do it properly. Or at least we will not burn the sugar.

Probably.