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Gooseberry Dumpling
Line a plain round basin or mould with a good suet crust (see CRUST, SUET). Pick the tops and stalks from as many gooseberries as will fill it, strew some moist sugar over the top, and cover with the paste. Pinch in the sides securely, to prevent the juice escaping, and tie in a floured cloth. Plunge the pudding into boiling water, and boil for two or three hours, according to the size of the pudding. Probable cost, 10d. for a pudding large enough to fill a quart mould. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A boiled suet pudding of the plainest kind: raw fruit, sugar and a suet crust, cooked in a basin in a pot of water. The whole thing hinges on the water never going off the boil and never dropping below the rim of the basin.
- Suet crust proportionsSuet crust is flour mixed with about half its weight in shredded suet, a pinch of salt, and cold water to a soft but rollable dough; whether a raising agent is called for depends on Cassell's own crust entry. For a quart basin, roughly 10 oz flour to 5 oz suet lines it and leaves enough for the lid.
- Basin sizeAn imperial quart is about 1.14 litres, so a 1.2 litre pudding basin is the nearest modern size, and lined with paste it takes roughly a pound to a pound and a half of gooseberries once topped and tailed. "Pick the tops and stalks" is exactly that: nip off the dried flower end and the stem.
- Moist sugarVictorian "moist sugar" is unrefined soft brown sugar, damper and darker than modern white. Light muscovado is the closest match. Gooseberries picked green and hard need a lot of it — 4 to 6 oz for this quantity, more than the recipe's casual "strew" suggests.
- GooseberriesThis wants firm green cooking gooseberries, not the sweet dessert varieties. Frozen work well and need no thawing, though they release more juice, so seal the crust edges with real care.
- Sealing and coveringDamp the rim of the lining paste before pressing the lid on, then pleat a sheet of buttered baking parchment and foil over the top before tying. The floured cloth is authentic and does work, but the pleat matters more than the fabric: the crust rises and needs room.
- Boiling timeTwo to three hours is not exaggerated for a suet crust of this thickness — the flour needs long, wet heat to go light rather than pasty. Two hours is ample for a quart basin. Keep the water at a steady boil and top up from a kettle so the pudding stays covered, as the recipe's "plunge into boiling water" implies.
- Turning outRest the pudding a few minutes before unmoulding, or the hot fruit juice may burst the base. Serve with pouring custard or cream; the juice inside is scalding for some minutes after it reaches the table.
- Cost and yieldTenpence made this a very cheap sweet dish for its period. Six to seven portions is honest for a quart basin, given the density of the crust.
Boiled suet puddings were the backbone of English domestic cooking for two centuries, and the fruit-lined basin version is the frugal sibling of the pastry pie: no oven required, only a pot and a fire that was burning anyway. Gooseberries suited the form perfectly, being cheap, early, sharply acidic, and abundant in cottage gardens across Britain from May onwards — the fruit was so widely grown that competitive gooseberry clubs flourished in the industrial north through the nineteenth century, exhibiting berries bred for sheer size. The technique is identical whether the filling is apple, damson, or the mutton-and-kidney of a steak pudding, which is why the book gives it plainly and expects the cook to generalise from it.