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Norfolk Dumplings
Beat two eggs thoroughly. Add a cupful of milk, a pinch of salt, and as much flour as will make a stiff batter. Have ready a pan of fast-boiling water. Drop the batter into it, in small lumps, and when boiled enough, serve immediately; if allowed to stand, the dumplings will become heavy. Time to boil, ten minutes. Probable cost, 4d. Sufficient for four persons.
A plain boiled batter dumpling, quick to make but unforgiving about timing. The whole point is to get them from pot to plate without pause.
- Serve at onceThe instruction not to let them stand is the hinge of the recipe. Boiled batter dumplings collapse and turn dense within a few minutes of leaving the water, so have the plates, gravy or broth ready before the batter goes in.
- QuantitiesA cupful in a book of this date is not a standardised measure, so treat any metric figure as approximate; flour "to make a stiff batter" is a matter of judgement, so add it gradually. The batter should hold its shape on a spoon rather than pour.
- Cooking waterFast-boiling water is specified for a reason: dropped into a lazy simmer the lumps spread and disintegrate. Salt the water, and cook in batches so the boil never dies down.
- Ten minutesThat is right for small spoon-sized lumps only. Anything the size of a golf ball needs longer, and the centre should be set rather than gluey when torn open.
- No raising agentThere is no baking powder or yeast here; lift comes only from the beaten eggs and the boiling water. Beating the eggs thoroughly, as directed, is what keeps them from being leaden.
- Cost and yield4d is Victorian pricing and points to a cheap dish for a modest table. The recipe says it is sufficient for four persons; it does not say in what capacity they were served.
- ServingIn Norfolk they were traditionally eaten before the meat with gravy. Sweet treatments with butter and sugar are also reported. The recipe itself says nothing about cooking them in broth or stew.
Norfolk dumplings are among the older English regional dumplings, and unlike the suet dumplings often used in stews they contain no fat at all; here they are boiled in water rather than cooked in the pot with the meat, though Norfolk dumplings were also commonly cooked on top of a stew. The better-known version is a yeasted bread-dough dumpling; the batter version given here is the quicker variant. Both are associated with the older English practice of serving a filling floury course with gravy before the joint, so that a small amount of meat went further. It is about as simple as boiled batter cookery gets: eggs, milk, flour, salt, and correct timing.