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Dumplings, Norfolk
Warm half a pint of milk, cream half an ounce of German yeast with a tea-spoonful of castor sugar, and mix the milk very smoothly with it. Take one pound of flour and mix with it a pinch of salt; hollow out the centre, pour in the warm milk, etc., and knead it up to a light dough. Leave it to rise for an hour; knead again, and leave it for another hour, then divide it into five or six dumplings. Have ready a saucepan of fast-boiling water, drop in the dumplings, and boil for half an hour; then dish them, and serve at once. These are usually served with boiled beef. Probable cost, 8d.
A yeast-raised boiled dumpling, quite different from the suet dumplings most cooks know. The dough is essentially bread dough, and it behaves like one.
- German yeastThis is fresh compressed baker's yeast. Half an ounce is about 14 g; substitute roughly 1½ teaspoons instant dried yeast or 2 teaspoons active dry, whisked into the warm milk with the sugar.
- Half a pint of milkImperial measure, so 10 fl oz — about 1¼ US cups. With 1 lb (450 g) flour that gives a moderately soft dough; hold back a little and add as needed, since flours vary in absorption.
- Castor sugarSuperfine sugar. Ordinary granulated works here, as it only feeds the yeast.
- Warm, not hot"Warm" for creaming yeast means blood heat, around 100F. Milk much above 110-115F begins to damage fresh yeast, and it is killed at around 130-140F, after which the dough will not rise.
- The boil is the hingeThe water must be at a hard, rolling boil when the dumplings go in and must stay there. A slack simmer gives heavy, sodden centres.
- Half an hour is longMany modern recipes for dumplings of this size give around 20 minutes. They are done when a skewer comes out clean.
- ServingTraditionally torn open with two forks rather than cut, which is said to keep them light rather than compressing the crumb. Five or six dumplings serve four to six alongside boiled beef and its broth.
Norfolk dumplings are the yeast-raised kind — locally called "floaters," as against the "sinkers" made with suet — and they are distinct from the suet dumplings that dominate English cookery elsewhere. They belong to a household economy in which flour was cheaper than meat: the dumplings were often eaten first, with gravy, so that less beef was needed to fill the table, and Cassell's note of a probable cost of eightpence for the whole batch makes the point plainly. The recipe demonstrates a fundamental technique, a plain bread dough cooked in water rather than in an oven, which is also how much older British "puddings" were made before domestic ovens became common.