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Crust, Suet, for Puddings
Allow six or eight ounces of suet and a pinch of salt for every pound of flour. Carefully remove the skin from the suet, and shred it as finely as possible, strewing a little flour over it two or three times to prevent its sticking together. Mix it with the flour, and work it into a firm paste with a little cold water. Probable cost, 4d. per pound
A basic ratio rather than a fixed formula: 6-8 oz suet to 1 lb flour, salt, and enough cold water to bind. It behaves quite differently from short pastry, and the handling is where it succeeds or fails.
- The hinge: keep the suet in piecesThe fat must stay in visible shreds through mixing and rolling, so that it melts during the long steaming and leaves the crust open and light. Warm hands, a food processor or overworking turn it to paste and the pudding steams heavy and close.
- Buying suetButchers' beef suet in the lump is what the book means, and it still needs skinning and shredding. Packaged shredded suet, beef or vegetable, is dusted with flour already and can be used straight from the box; grating suet or firm block fat from frozen is the easiest way to do it at home.
- Flour and raisingPlain (all-purpose) flour is intended. Cassell's crust rises only from steam, which suits a firm boiled pudding; if you want the softer, cakier crust many modern recipes give, use self-raising flour.
- How much waterAbout 6-10 fl oz of very cold water per pound of flour, added a little at a time. "Firm paste" is meant literally, stiffer than shortcrust: it should hold a shape and not slump when lining a basin.
- Quantity and yield1 lb flour with 8 oz suet makes enough crust to line and lid a large basin, of 2 pints (1.2 litres) or more, serving roughly six; scale the ratio down for a smaller pudding, 8 oz flour to 4 oz suet.
- Cooking itSuet crust needs prolonged moist heat, not a hot dry oven. A covered basin steamed or boiled for 1 1/2 to 2 hours for a jam or fruit pudding, 3 to 4 hours for raw beef fillings; roll the crust about 1/4 in thick, thinner for the lid.
- The costing"4d. per pound" is pre-decimal British currency, four old pence, and reflects late-Victorian prices. It is a marker of how cheap this pastry was, not a figure that converts usefully.
Suet crust is the workhorse pastry of the British kitchen, and the reason so much of that cooking happens in a cloth or a basin over water rather than in an oven: a household with a single fire and no reliable oven could still put a substantial pudding on the table. Beef suet, the hard fat from around the kidneys, melts at a higher temperature than butter or lard, which is why it survives hours of steaming and leaves a crust that is spongy rather than short. The same paste served for dishes sweet and savoury alike, from roly-poly and jam pudding to steak and kidney and boiled beefsteak pudding. The entry's ratio-per-pound style is typical of the period, when a cook was expected to scale a formula to the size of the family rather than follow a fixed list; the "probable cost" lines that close so many Cassell's entries are usually taken to have been aimed at the mistress of a middle-class house keeping accounts.