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APPLE DUMPLINGS (another way)
Take as many apples as you wish to make dumplings, allowing one dumpling for each person. Pare them, and scoop the core out without breaking them. Into each cavity put a clove, a little piece of butter, and as much sugar as will fill it. Cover each apple separately with a little piece of suet paste, tie in a floured cloth, and boil. Before serving, put a little piece of butter and sugar into each dumpling. Loosely-knitted cloths are very nice for puddings; they are most easily washed, and produce a pretty effect. Boil half an hour. Probable cost, 2d. each dumpling.
A straightforward boiled dumpling that depends almost entirely on the pastry being sealed. Any gap and the apple's juice escapes into the water, leaving a grey, waterlogged crust.
- Suet pasteA common Victorian proportion is about 1 lb flour to 6-8 oz shredded suet, a pinch of salt, and cold water to bind. Packet shredded suet, beef or vegetable, behaves the same; the paste should be firm rather than soft, or it will sag off the fruit.
- Sealing is the hingeRoll the paste to about 1/4 inch, wrap it round the apple, and pinch the joins hard with wet fingers until they disappear. Set the sealed side downward in the cloth so its weight helps keep it shut.
- The clothA square of scalded cotton or a well-worn tea towel, floured while damp, is what is wanted. Flour it generously and tie loosely — the paste swells. The knitted cloths recommended here were a Victorian convenience; today a square of muslin, or a pleated sheet of greased foil, does the same work.
- BoilingLower into water already at a rolling boil and keep it boiling, topping up with more boiling water so the dumplings stay covered. The stated half hour will suit a small apple; a large cooking apple is likely to need longer before the fruit collapses inside.
- ApplesThe recipe names no variety, but a tart cooking apple such as Bramley suits it better than a dessert apple, which keeps its shape and stays bland. Core from the stem end with an apple corer rather than cutting through, so the cavity holds the sugar.
- The cloveOne whole clove per apple is assertive by modern taste and should be fished out at the table. Half a clove, or a strip of lemon peel, gives a gentler result.
- Yield and servingOne per person, as the recipe says. Unwrap immediately on lifting from the pot or the crust steams and turns pasty, then add the finishing butter and sugar through the top. Cream or thin custard suits it.
- Probable costTwopence each reflects late-Victorian pricing and indicates a cheap sweet course.
Boiled apple dumplings belong to the long English tradition of pudding-cloth cookery, which let a household cook a sweet course in the same pot as the dinner rather than heating an oven. Suet — the hard fat from around beef kidneys — was cheap, kept well without refrigeration, and made a paste that could withstand long boiling, which is part of why it was so widely used in British boiled puddings. The apple and clove pairing is older than this recipe and appears throughout eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cookery. The recipe is headed "another way," indicating it is one of several apple dumpling methods in the book.