Sussex Pond Pudding is a traditional English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 pudding believed to originate from the South East county of Sussex

Sussex

Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...

. Made of a suet

Suet

Suet is raw beef or mutton fat, especially the hard fat found around the loins and kidneys.Suet has a melting point of between 45° and 50°C and congelation between 37° and 40°C....

 pastry which encases a whole lemon, with butter and sugar, it is boiled or steamed for several hours.

This rich and heavy dessert has gone out of fashion over the years due to health and diet consciousness, although there are many chefs in Britain, such as famed British chef Heston Blumenthal

Heston Blumenthal

Heston Marc Blumenthal OBE is an English chef and owner of The Fat Duck, a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Bray, Berkshire voted Best Restaurant in the UK by The Good Food Guide 2007 and 2009, and voted best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine in 2005...

 and Naz, the chef at the little-known but much-acclaimed "Ramsons" restaurant in Ramsbottom, who are trying to revive this type of traditional cookery.

Some cooks like to add currants to the filling, but this would make it a Kentish

Kentish

The Kentish Council is a Local Government Area of Tasmania. It is located in the north-west of the state, slightly inland from the coast. The area was explored by the surveyor Nathaniel Kentish in 1842 who was given the task of finding a route from Deloraine through to Tasmania's north west coast...

 Puddle Pudding or Kentish Well Pudding.

Preparation

While cooking, the filling ingredients create a thick, caramelized sauce, which upon serving and cutting of the pudding, runs out and pools around the plate, creating a “pond”. After cooking for so long, the skin of the lemon almost candies like a marmalade

Marmalade

Marmalade is a fruit preserve made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits, boiled with sugar and water. The benchmark citrus fruit for marmalade production in Britain is the "Seville orange" from Spain, Citrus aurantium var...

 in its own juices and that of the butter and sugar.

The most authentic recipes call for beef suet for making the pastry which is available in all supermarkets in the UK, but vegetable shortening, or even cold butter, can be substituted for similar results.

The best lemons to use in this pudding are thin skinned, juicy ones that have been un-sprayed and are preferably un-waxed.

Earlier style

Much older cookery books and recipes do not actually call for use of a lemon at all. Here is one found by Florence White:

”This was given us at Chailey

Chailey

Chailey is a village and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. It is located ten miles north of Lewes, on the A272 road from Winchester to Canterbury...

, Sussex, by a nursemaid in 1880 or thereabouts. It was made for me boiled in a cloth (the correct way) in 1905 by an old cottage woman in the village of Westham

Westham

Westham is a large village civil parish in the Wealden District of East Sussex, England. The village is adjacent to Pevensey five miles north-east of Eastbourne. The parish consists of three settlements: Westham; Stone Cross; and Hankham...

. In Sussex cottages, steak and kidney puddings are still (1931) boiled in a cloth only.” –H.J. Glover