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Paste, Suet, for Boiled Puddings
Chop very finely six ounces of beef suet, freed from skin and sinew, and whilst chopping it keep dredging a little flour over it. Mix with it one pound of flour, and add as much cold water as will make the mixture up into a firm smooth paste. Roll it out, and it is ready for use. If a richer crust be required, a larger proportion of suet may be used, but this is quite good enough for ordinary purposes. Time, ten minutes to prepare. Probable cost, 4d.
A plain suet crust in the classic English proportion of half fat to flour, meant to line a basin for a boiled or steamed pudding. Two things decide whether it works: the suet must stay cold and in small pieces, and the dough must be handled as little as possible.
- The ratioSix ounces of suet to one pound of flour is roughly 170 g to 450 g, a lean crust by modern standards. Many modern recipes use half the flour's weight in suet (225 g), which gives a softer, more tender crust; the book's own note about "a larger proportion" is pointing at exactly that.
- Suet, and what to buyBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys, and a butcher will still sell it in the piece. Shredded packet suet, beef or vegetable, is dusted with flour already and can be used weight for weight, skipping the chopping and the dredging.
- Why the flour is dredged inFlour scattered over the suet as it is chopped keeps the pieces from smearing together on the board and knife. Chill the suet hard first; if it warms and pastes, the crust cooks heavy rather than light.
- No raising agentThis is a true plain suet paste, so it will be dense and firm - correct for a crust that has to hold gravy through a long boil. Later versions often add a raising agent, or use self-raising flour, for a lighter, more cakelike result; that is a different crust, not a correction of this one.
- Water quantityThe recipe leaves it open, which is honest, since flour absorbency varies. Expect around 250-300 ml cold water for a pound of flour; stop as soon as it comes together as one smooth, firm mass and do not knead it further.
- Cooking, which the recipe omitsSuet crust needs long moist heat, not a quick bake. A basin lined with this paste, filled, covered with a pleated round of greaseproof and foil and tied, wants two to three hours of steady steaming or boiling for a fruit pudding, longer for beef and kidney. The pan must never go off the boil, and topping up should be with boiling water.
- YieldA pound of flour makes a generous quantity of paste, enough to line and lid a pudding basin of around 1.5-2 litres (2½-3½ pints); the number of servings depends on the filling.
- That fourpenceThe "probable cost" of 4d is a Victorian retail figure, part of Cassell's habit of costing every dish so a household could budget. It is a useful reminder that suet crust was the cheap way to turn a small amount of meat or fruit into a meal for a family.
Suet crust belongs to the boiling pot rather than the oven. Where a household cooked over a fire with a single large pot, a floured cloth or a basin of suet paste let them produce a filled, self-contained dish in that pot - hence the long line of boiled puddings, sweet and savoury, from apple dumplings to steak and kidney. Beef suet was a common everyday solid fat in Britain well into the twentieth century, cheap, plentiful from any butcher, and with a high melting point that lets the crust set before the fat runs out of it. This is a foundation rather than a dish: the reader was expected to turn to it repeatedly and fill it with whatever the season or the housekeeping allowance offered.