Christmas Pudding

The last Sunday before Advent. The afternoons have gone properly dark by four, the kitchen is the warmest room in the house, and there's a big bowl on the table full of fruit that has been sitting in stout and brandy since yesterday. It has gone soft and plump and dark, and the whole bowl smells of Christmas already. This is Stir-up Sunday. The one day in the cooking calendar that has a name.

There are recipes I make because they're useful and recipes I make because they're lovely, and then there's this one, which I make because the year wouldn't feel right without it. Everyone in the house takes a turn with the wooden spoon, stirring from east to west in honour of a tradition nobody can quite explain, making a wish that nobody ever says out loud. The mixture is so dense by the end that you have to put your shoulder into it. That's part of the point.

Then it steams for most of a day, quietly, while the house fills up with the smell of cloves and orange peel and something richer underneath. You wrap it up, tuck it into a cupboard, and mostly forget about it. Except you don't, not really, because every week or so you unwrap the top, prick it with a skewer, and spoon a little brandy into it. Feeding the pudding. It's a silly phrase and I love it.

On Christmas Day you steam it again, turn it out onto a warm plate, stick a sprig of holly in the top, and set it alight with warm brandy at the table. The flame is pale blue and brief and entirely theatrical, and for about thirty seconds everyone stops talking. Then it's just pudding: dense, dark, spicy, sticky, entirely itself. Serve it with brandy butter or cold cream, and don't ask anyone to take a small portion, because nobody will.