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Savoury Dumplings
Mix two ounces each of flour, white bread-crumbs, wholemeal, and oatmeal; rub in three ounces of clarified fat, and add a salt-spoonful of salt and nearly as much pepper. Then mix in half a tea-spoonful of baking-powder, and the same of mixed sweet herbs, with a little ground mace or nutmeg. Beat up an egg, and put it in with sufficient milk to make a paste that can be formed into dumplings. These may be boiled or steamed. Dumplings the size of a hen's egg will take about an hour. Probable cost, 1s.
A mixed-grain suet dumpling meant to be dropped into a stew or steamed alongside one. The proportions are given by weight, which makes them easy to scale, but two of the instructions need adjusting.
- The weights in cupsTwo ounces of white flour is a scant half cup; the same weight of fresh white breadcrumbs is closer to a cup, since crumbs are bulky. Weighing is far more reliable here than measuring by volume, given four different dry ingredients.
- Wholemeal and oatmealWholemeal is whole wheat flour. Oatmeal here means medium or fine ground oatmeal, not modern rolled or instant oats, which will not hydrate the same way; pinhead or steel-cut oats are too coarse and stay gritty.
- Clarified fatIn a savoury dumpling of this date this means beef dripping or lard, clarified and cooled firm enough to rub into the dry mixture. Butter works but browns and softens the crumb.
- A salt-spoonfulAbout a quarter teaspoon. The pepper, "nearly as much," is a scant quarter teaspoon.
- Cooking timeAn hour is longer than these are likely to need. Dumplings of this size raised with baking powder are usually done in 20 to 30 minutes, simmered covered or steamed, and a full hour risks a heavy, sodden result. The longer time may be carried over from older suet-and-flour dumplings made without baking powder.
- Mix and cook promptlyOnce the baking powder meets the egg and milk it begins working. Shape and cook straight away rather than letting the paste stand.
- Liquid"Sufficient milk" is roughly 3 to 5 tablespoons with one egg. Aim for a soft paste that just holds a shape without cracking, wetter than pastry and drier than batter.
- Yield and servingAbout eight dumplings the size given. Simmer them in the broth of a beef or mutton stew rather than plain water; in water they rely on the salt, pepper, sweet herbs and mace or nutmeg alone.
Savoury boiled dumplings were among the cheapest ways to make a small quantity of meat feed a household, and this version is unusual mainly for its grain mixture: white flour, breadcrumbs, wholemeal and oatmeal in equal parts. That blend fits a Victorian interest in wholemeal and oats as more nourishing than white flour, argued in cookery and household manuals of the period, alongside the practical fact that stale bread and oatmeal cost less than fine flour. The baking powder points to a date after the middle of the century: commercial baking powders were on sale in Britain from the 1840s and spread through domestic kitchens in the decades that followed, and earlier dumplings of this kind relied on suet, flour and long boiling. The "probable cost, 1s." is the costing notation used throughout the book, one shilling for the batch.