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Suet Dumplings, Excellent
Shred finely six ounces of suet freed from skin and fibre. Add to it a tea-spoonful of salt, six ounces of flour, and two ounces of bread-crumbs. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly, and make them into a paste with two eggs well whisked and mixed with six table-spoonfuls of milk. Divide the mixture into five or six dumplings, tie these separately into cloths lightly dredged with flour, and boil them quickly until done enough. If any of these dumplings are left, they may be cut into slices, fried in butter, and served a second time. Time to boil, three-quarters of an hour to one hour, according to size. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A plain boiled suet pudding in individual portions, of the kind meant to be served with a stew or with sugar and treacle. The proportions are unusually rich for dumplings, hence the "excellent".
- The hinge: keep the water at a full boilThe recipe says "boil them quickly" for a reason. Suet dumplings dropped into water that is merely simmering absorb liquid before the flour sets, and come out heavy and grey. Keep a large pan at a rolling boil and top up with boiling water, never cold.
- SuetFresh beef suet from a butcher must be freed of membrane and shredded or grated cold; freezing it for twenty minutes makes this far easier. Packet shredded suet, beef or vegetable, works in the same weight and needs no preparation.
- WeightsSix ounces suet is about 170 g, six ounces flour about 170 g (roughly 1 1/3 cups), and two ounces breadcrumbs about 55 g. Use plain flour; there is no raising agent in this mixture.
- Six table-spoonfuls of milkCount on about 90 ml. Add it gradually, since eggs vary and you want a soft paste that just holds together, not a batter.
- Tying in clothsSquares of scalded cotton or muslin, floured on the inside, tied loosely with string to leave room for swelling. A modern substitute is to shape the dumplings and lower them straight into boiling water or onto the surface of a simmering stew, though free dumplings will be softer and less shapely.
- TimingForty-five minutes to an hour is accurate for dumplings of this size and holds today; a skewer should come out clean and the centre should be uniformly set. Smaller free-cooked dumplings dropped into a stew are done in 20 to 25 minutes.
- Yield and servingFive or six dumplings, enough for four or five as a side. Serve with a beef stew or braise, or as a sweet with brown sugar, golden syrup or jam.
- The leftoversSlicing cold dumplings and frying them in butter genuinely works, and is worth doing deliberately. Cut them at least half an inch thick and brown both sides in a hot pan; they crisp outside and stay soft within.
Boiled suet paste is one of the oldest surviving English kitchen techniques, made possible by the pudding cloth, which came into use in the seventeenth century and freed cooks from stuffing puddings into animal intestines. The same paste, in slightly different proportions, served for dumplings, roly-poly, and the crust of a steak and kidney pudding. Suet was cheap and plentiful in a period when butchers sold every part of the carcass, and 10d for enough to feed five puts this squarely among household economy dishes. The note on frying the leftovers is characteristic of Victorian cookery books, which treated the second appearance of a dish as part of the plan rather than an afterthought.