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Dumplings, Plain
Take one pound of light dough, made as for bread, and roll it into small round balls, as large as an egg. Drop them into a saucepan of fast-boiling water, first flattening them with the hand. Care should be taken to keep the water boiling, and to serve quickly when done, or they will be heavy. If the dough be mixed with milk, instead of water, the dumplings will be more delicate. They may be sent to table as an accompaniment to meat, or eaten with a sweet sauce. Time, twenty minutes to boil. Probable cost, 2d. per pound. Sufficient for twelve dumplings.
A pound of risen bread dough, boiled rather than baked. The recipe assumes you already have dough proving in the kitchen, which most Victorian households did.
- The dough"Light dough, made as for bread" means a yeasted dough that has already risen once. A pound of shop-bought bread dough, or a home batch of the same weight made from flour, yeast, salt and enough liquid to bring it together, will do. Mixing with milk in place of water, as the recipe suggests, gives a softer result.
- The hinge: keep the water at a full boilThis is the whole instruction. Dumplings dropped into water that falls off the boil absorb liquid before the outside sets, and come out dense and greyish. Use a wide pan with plenty of water, add them a few at a time, and bring it back to a rolling boil before the next batch.
- Flatten themPressing each ball flat with the palm, as the recipe directs, helps them cook evenly through in the twenty minutes given.
- Don't crowd, don't lidThe dumplings will swell as they cook. Leave room, and keep the pan uncovered so you can see the boil is holding.
- Serve at onceThe warning about heaviness is accurate. A boiled yeast dumpling left to sit collapses and turns gluey as it cools. Lift them out with a slotted spoon and take them straight to the table.
- TestingTwenty minutes is the time the recipe gives. Split one open; it should be dry and open-crumbed at the centre, not tacky.
- Yield and costTwelve dumplings from the pound, enough for four to six as a side. "2d. per pound" is twopence in pre-decimal currency, a note on how cheaply bulk could be put on a plate rather than any guide to modern price.
- How to serveWith a stew or boiled meat they want the cooking liquor spooned over. For the "sweet sauce" the recipe mentions, melted butter with sugar, a thin custard or a jam sauce would all fit.
Boiled bread dough is one of the oldest ways of stretching a meal in a British kitchen: a household already heating a pot for meat could add dumplings without lighting an oven, often said to be the expensive part of cooking in a coal-fired range. The trick of switching water for milk to get a more delicate result, and the anxiety about heaviness, both point at the same thing: without an oven's dry heat, texture depends entirely on managing the boil. Similar dumplings survive in Norfolk, where they are still made from risen bread dough rather than suet and were traditionally eaten before the meat to blunt the appetite.