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Oxford Dumplings or Puddings
Shred a quarter of a pound of kidney suet very finely. Add a pinch of salt, two ounces of stale bread-crumbs, two ounces of dried flour, four ounces of picked and dried currants, two table-spoonfuls of moist sugar, a table-spoonful of minced lemon-rind, and half a nutmeg, grated. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly. Moisten them to a stiff paste with a little milk and two well-beaten eggs, divide the mixture into dumplings, and fry them in hot fat until they are lightly browned. Serve with wine sauce. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A fried suet dumpling of the sweet, currant-studded kind that once bridged the gap between pudding and fritter. The mixture must be stiff enough to hold its shape in the fat, which is where most of the attention should go.
- The hinge: a genuinely stiff pasteAdd the milk a spoonful at a time — the two beaten eggs already carry a good deal of moisture, and a slack mixture will fall apart in the pan. It should be firm enough to roll into balls that hold their shape without slumping.
- Kidney suetBeef kidney suet, shredded fine. Packet shredded suet (beef or vegetarian) is the direct substitute at the same weight, 4 oz / 115 g. If using fresh suet, chill it hard and remove the papery membrane before shredding.
- Dried flourFlour dried in a low oven or before the fire, standard practice when flour was stored in damp larders. Modern plain flour needs no treatment; just weigh out 2 oz / 55 g.
- Moist sugarUnrefined soft brown sugar, not white. Light muscovado is the nearest thing on a supermarket shelf.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. "Picked and dried" means sorted for stalks and grit and spread out to dry after washing — modern packaged currants need only a quick check for stems.
- Half a nutmegGrated whole this is roughly a teaspoon of nutmeg, assertive by current tastes. Half that amount suits most palates, and it should be grated fresh rather than taken from a jar.
- FryingThe recipe says only 'hot fat' and gives no temperature or time. If deep-frying, fat at around 340\350F / 170\175C suits, so the suet renders and the centre cooks through before the outside darkens; dumplings of about 1½ inches will take something like 6–8 minutes. Larger ones risk browning outside while staying raw within.
- Wine sauceA sweet pouring sauce of sugar, butter and sherry or Madeira, thickened lightly and served hot. Any warm custard or brandy sauce answers the same purpose.
- Yield and costFive or six servings, as stated. The eightpence is a Victorian retail estimate and tells you the dish was cheap household eating rather than a company dessert.
Oxford dumplings appear under that name in English cookery books well before Cassell's, generally as a sweetened suet mixture enriched with currants, lemon peel and nutmeg and then fried rather than boiled in a cloth — the frying is what distinguishes them from the plain suet dumpling of everyday dinners. The connection to Oxford is traditional rather than documented; a number of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century dishes acquired university and college names that reflected fashion more than origin. What the recipe does show plainly is the Victorian household economy of suet: cheap, filling, and capable of carrying dried fruit and spice into something that could be sent up as a sweet course. The costing of eightpence, printed as a matter of course throughout Cassell's, was aimed at the mistress planning a week of meals on a fixed allowance.