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Dumplings, Steamed
Get the ordinary dough at the baker's, and instead of boiling, steam over a saucepan of boiling water. The dumplings will take longer to steam than to boil, but they will present a better appearance than boiled ones, being smooth and dry on the outside. There is, besides, the saving of an extra saucepan, for any article of food requiring fast boiling may be cooked underneath the steamed dumplings. Care must be taken that the water does not stop boiling until they are done, and that they are served quickly. Meat gravy, or melted butter as a sauce. Time, half an hour to steam.
A one-paragraph method rather than a formula, and it assumes something no longer true: that a baker two doors down would sell you a lump of risen bread dough. Everything else translates directly.
- "The ordinary dough at the baker's"This means plain yeasted bread dough. Supermarket pizza dough or frozen bread dough (thawed and proved) does the same job; about 1 lb makes four dumplings of roughly 4 oz each. Suet dumpling dough will also steam, but expect it to need longer.
- The point of the methodBoiled bread dumplings absorb water and turn slick on the surface. Steam sets the outside without wetting it, which is the "smooth and dry" appearance being promised, and it is the first of the two reasons the author gives.
- Rigging the steamerA folding steamer basket or a metal colander over a saucepan is fine, lid on. Leave a good inch between dumplings and the same above them, because yeasted dough expands sharply in the first ten minutes and they will fuse into a slab if crowded.
- Cooking something underneathThe economy the author is proud of still works, but choose the food below with care, since anything strongly flavoured can scent the dough. The recipe specifies only "any article of food requiring fast boiling"; potatoes or a joint of boiling meat would suit.
- Do not lift the lidKeep the heat up -- the warning that the water must not stop boiling is a warning about dropping the temperature. Dough part-set by steam is likely to turn dense if the heat falters. Check the water level before you start rather than halfway through.
- Timing and donenessHalf an hour is the time the recipe gives, and suits dumplings of moderate size. They are done when a skewer comes out clean and the surface is dry and springy; underdone centres stay gummy.
- Serve at once"served quickly" is not politeness. Steamed bread dumplings shrink and toughen soon after leaving the steam, so have the gravy or melted butter poured and waiting.
- YieldRoughly four dumplings from 1 lb of dough, enough for four alongside a stew or boiled meat, or two as a plain supper with butter.
Steamed dough dumplings sit in the older English tradition of the plain boiled pudding, where flour and water or flour and suet were stretched to fill a plate that meat alone could not. What dates this entry is the casual instruction to buy the dough rather than mix it: at a time when townspeople commonly bought their bread from a commercial baker, buying an unbaked lump for a dumpling or a pie was an unremarkable transaction. The passage reads less as a formula than as a short argument about method, and the argument is a domestic-economy one, saving fuel and a second pan by cooking two dishes over one fire.