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Crust, Butter, for Boiled Puddings
Put one pound of flour, a pinch of salt, and half a tea-spoonful of baking-powder into a basin, mix them well, then rub into them six ounces of fresh butter. Work the mixture with a knife or fork into a paste by the addition of half a pint of water. Roll it out once or twice, and it will be ready for use. Butter must be used for pudding-crust when suet is disliked, as lard is not nice for boiled puddings. If a richer crust is preferred, another ounce or two of butter may be added, but for ordinary puddings the crust just described is excellent. Time, a quarter of an hour to prepare. Probable cost, 6d. per pound. Sufficient, one pound for a pudding large enough for three or four persons.
A plain suet-free pastry for lining a pudding basin or wrapping a roly-poly. The proportions are sound; only the liquid needs judgement.
- The measuresCassell's is a British book, so the half pint is an imperial one: 10 fl oz, or about 1¼ US cups. Note that this is a generous amount of water for a pound of flour — add it in stages and stop when the paste comes together, as flour absorbency varies.
- Butter cold, not soft"Fresh butter" means unsalted, as opposed to the salted keeping butter of the period. Use it straight from the fridge and rub it in until the mixture looks like coarse breadcrumbs; warm butter gives a heavy, greasy crust that will not steam light.
- Six ounces to the poundThat is 170 g butter to 450 g flour, a leaner ratio than shortcrust because the crust has to hold a wet filling through long boiling. The extra ounce or two suggested makes a noticeably more tender crust but a slightly more fragile lining.
- Baking powderHalf a teaspoon per pound of flour is a token amount, meant only to lift the dough a little under steam. Modern baking powder is stronger and more reliably double-acting; the half teaspoon is still fine, and more will give the crust a soda taste.
- Roll once or twice onlyThis is the hinge. Handle it like pastry, not bread — repeated rolling develops gluten and produces a tough, leathery crust that turns rubbery once boiled.
- Cooking itThe recipe covers the crust alone. Lining a greased pudding basin, the pudding wants a tight cover of pleated baking parchment and foil (a floured cloth would have been the period practice), then steaming or boiling with the water halfway up the basin — reckon on 1½ to 2 hours for fruit, longer for meat, topping up with boiling water so the pan never runs dry.
- Yield and costOne pound of flour serves three or four, as stated. The 6d. per pound is a late-Victorian retail figure and has no modern equivalent worth converting.
Boiled and steamed puddings were the backbone of English domestic cookery well into the twentieth century, and the crust that held them was normally made with shredded beef suet — cheap, high-melting, and reliable in a cloth. Cassell's offers butter here for households where suet was "disliked," and rules out lard for boiled puddings without saying why. The distinction matters because the fat in a boiled crust never browns: it simply melts into steam-swollen flour, so its flavour is left exposed in a way it would not be in an oven-baked pie.