(The following story by Greg Gormick appeared on the Toronto Star website on December 19.)
TORONTO — Could there be anything more Canadian than going home for Christmas by train and whiling away the snowy miles with a traditional dining car meal served on heavy china and crisp linen? Perhaps only ending that meal with the plum pudding that was, for generations, a festive delight on dining cars.
When the federal government’s carving knife first scraped VIA’s carcass a quarter-century ago, the plum pudding fell by the trackside for budgetary reasons. Now, with trains back “in” with the public and politicians alike, the tradition is being revived for Christmas week on the stainless steel dining cars of VIA’s transcontinental streamliner, The Canadian.
VIA’s Vancouver director of customer experience, James Kleiner, says the inspiration for the holiday-only dessert came from one of the railway’s Winnipeg chefs, who sent him a Canadian National (CN) cookbook from the 1950s containing the original recipe. “I did my apprenticeship with Canadian Pacific Hotels,” says Kleiner. “We’d get maitre d’hotels who’d switch over from being dining car stewards when they’d had enough of the gruelling hours on the trains. I’d heard from some of the CN guys about how they served trainloads of this plum pudding years ago.”
Kleiner, who was previously VIA’s executive chef, says constant passenger requests led him to ask one of the railway’s Winnipeg development chefs to send it to local bakers for costing. Although the price is high – “beef suet and sultanas are not cheap commodities these days” – it was approved because it adds a unique element to the experience that rail travel offers in this airline-weary world. Kleiner adds that it is being done completely within the budget constraints always facing a government-owned service that must justify itself to taxpayers, as well as dining car patrons.
The Canadian is the flagship of VIA’s fleet. It links Toronto with Vancouver, departing Union Station on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings.
This is the second year of the plum pudding revival, and VIA expects about 700 people to indulge between Dec. 18 and 26. Those who pay a sleeping car fare eat free in the dining car. Coach passengers must pay $25.
The pudding will be served with rum sauce, but a hard sauce is available upon request.
As succulent nostalgia, VIA couldn’t do better. The rich, fragrant dessert harks back to the work of the late, English-born CN dining car chef instructor Joseph “Bill” Nellis, who joined the railway in 1919 and first served it to passengers on trains running out of Montreal in 1937.
His first three-ton lot proved so popular it was produced in increasing quantities each year and served on trains across the transcontinental system, as well as the railway’s hotels and steamships. It was also canned for off-train sales. CN eventually produced 25 tons each Christmas.
Nellis’ plum pudding recipe dated back to mid-19th century England. It was a food writer’s dream and the annual production in an old wooden dining car at Montreal’s Point St. Charles Coach Yard never failed to bring out the press – and yard workers tantalized by the aroma.
For 25 days each fall, Nellis supervised a staff of chefs in the preparation of the pudding on a monstrous scale. Years after he retired, he would cheerfully return to make sure the chefs mixed, stirred and cooked the tons of ingredients to his specifications.
Most of each year’s lot was consumed on the trains, but what little remained at the end of the holiday rush was sent back to the Montreal commissary. There, it was stored until the following year’s pudding cook-off, when it was ploughed back into the new batch. Nellis said this added “character” to his creation, ripening to a rich, mellow flavour by early spring.
Said one of his co-workers, Nellis was a chef who liked nothing better than watching passengers leave the dining cars of “his railway” with smiles on their faces.
Kleiner echoes those sentiments and sees the plum pudding as one way to do that on his railway’s flagship train.
He says he views it as being simultaneously Canadian and unique to rail passenger service. From his second-floor office at Vancouver’s Pacific Central Terminal, Kleiner gazes out over a sea of classic stainless steel dining, sleeping and dome cars, and talks about the need for the service to be relevant, cost-effective and yet true to the traditions of fine railway dining.
“I still think of the wonderful stories those old dining car crews would tell me about how they would stop in the mountains and pick up ice from the ice houses and salmon from native Canadians. Or how the steward would send the crew off to pick blueberries while they were waiting in a siding for a meet with a freight train. And, of course, the famous goldeye they’d put on in Winnipeg.
“I’ll bet there hasn’t been a railway that’s ever made money on its dining cars. But you have to do it and do it well because it’s the one thing, above all, that people expect and remember. You’re helping to create an experience that will last them a lifetime. That’s a challenge and a pleasure. Bringing back the old CN plum pudding is one of those pleasures,” Kleiner says.
This year he received a call from a Winnipeg woman whose father is terminally ill. One last thing he wants is to taste the CN plum pudding again. It has been arranged.
As Kleiner says, it’s amazing that this dessert has had such an impact on so many Canadians.