A VILLAGE church is offering a taste of Christmas past - after a parishoner uncovered a 200-year-old recipe.

Clare Harding, who goes to St Peter's Church, Lovely Hall Lane, Salesbury, is making Christmas puddings from the Victorian poet's recipe which says to put in one pint of brandy!

Clare 61, of Durham Road, Wilpshire, spent weeks tracking down the 19th century recipe to celebrate the bi-centenary of the church.

The puddings will be sold off to raise money for a £50,000 appeal to buy a new church organ.

The recipe contains dried fruit and candied peel, five eggs, one pint of brandy, mashed potatoes, and boiled carrots.

Clare has replaced the suet in the original recipe with butter so it is a suitable and light pudding suitable for vegetarians.

A modern recipe contains other ingredients including golden caster sugar, plain flour, breadcrumbs, flaked almonds, lemon zest, cinnamon and only 150ml/5fl oz of brandy or rum.

Clare said: "I always make Christmas puddings, but it is usually an older recipe - supposedly made for King George I when he first came to England in 1714.

"But with the church's 200th anniversary, I began to wonder what they were eating 200 years ago.

"I did a lot of research to find out and I ended up looking through facsimilies of old recipes and came across the one by Eliza Acton."

Elizabeth 'Eliza' Acton was an English poet and cook who produced one of the country's first cookbooks aimed at the domestic reader rather than the professional cook or chef, called Modern Cookery for Private Families.

Clare said she did not have too much trouble finding the ingredients to the recipe, but had to track down the correct cloth to authentically boil them in.

She said: "Luckily I found the unbleached calico at a stall on Blackburn market.

"I've only done seven so far because it's an experiment. I've not tried one, but they smell great.

"They're not perfectly round though. I think I gave them too much room to cook."

Clare's puddings are family-sized and cost £5 each.

The full recipe is included in her own recipe book, called Family Feats, which she has also produced to raise money for the organ fund.

The book, which is 100 pages long and contains colour pictures, lists meals from five generations of Clare's family - from her great grandmother down to her son's recipes.

She added: "It's a way of recording things from my childhood that would otherwise be lost.

"Luckily my mother wrote them down because I don't ever remember my grandmother using a recipe - it was all done from memory."

Both the puddings and the recipe book are available from December 8 at the St Peter's Christmas Fayre, or by ringing Clare on 01254 240127.