There are many good recipes differing very little from each other, any one of which would make as good a pudding as usually met with in "old England," but it requires more than a good recipe to turn out the pudding as it is eaten there; the best recipe is more often than not spoiled in the cooking. I have known them to be three-parts boiled (as is the usual way) and given to friends, and yet in the final two hours' boiling be spoiled.

In the tying up and boiling lies the art of making any good boiled pudding; bear in mind the bowl or pudding boiler must be full, the cloth tied firmly over the bowl (it will always " give" enough for the swelling of the pudding), the water be fast boiling, and when the pudding is put in, be quickly brought to the boil again, and kept boiling every minute of the time prescribed, replenishing from a kettle of boiling water kept for that purpose. If the pudding ceases to boil you will find it sticky.

The orthodox Christmas pudding is always an equal quantity of suet, fruit and eggs; the variations are in the proportions of ingredients added for flavoring, and in the flour some families (and it is usually a family recipe handed down for generations), use the same proportion of flour as of each kind of fruit, others use half flour and half bread-crumbs, others again use all bread-crumbs and no flour. I give three recipes, all excellent, provided they are properly boiled.