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Suet Dumplings, Sweet
Prepare the suet dumplings as in the last recipe. Before putting the suet into the flour, take the necessary quantity of salt, and mix with it a table-spoonful of sugar, a pinch of grated nutmeg or spice, and any flavouring ingredients that may be chosen. Mix all thoroughly together, make the mixture into dough, divide it into balls, and boil as before. A few currants may be added if liked, and instead of sugar a spoonful of treacle may be dissolved in the water. Time to boil the dumplings, half to three-quarters of an hour, according to size. Dumplings made with one pound of flour and half a pound of suet will be sufficient for five or six persons. Probable cost, 8d.
A sweetened variant of the plain boiled suet dumpling, written in the shorthand of a book that expects you to have read the previous entry. The proportions given at the end are the useful part: 1 lb flour to 1/2 lb suet, serving five or six.
- The suetPacket shredded beef suet works directly; vegetable suet behaves the same way in a boiled dumpling. If using a lump of raw beef kidney suet, chill it hard, strip the papery membrane, and grate it coarsely, tossing the shreds in a little of the flour so they stay separate.
- RaisingThe previous recipe, which this one builds on, is not reproduced here, so whether it calls for a raising agent cannot be checked; Victorian suet dumplings were made both ways, and without one the balls come out heavy and close. If you want them lighter, reckon on about 2 to 3 teaspoons of baking powder per pound of plain flour, or use self-raising flour and leave the added salt at roughly a teaspoon.
- "The necessary quantity of salt"Around a level teaspoon per pound of flour. Since this version is sweet, do not increase it; the salt is only there to keep the dough from tasting flat.
- The treacleAmbiguous as written. The sense is almost certainly that the treacle is dissolved in the mixing water for the dough, not in the boiling water of the pot. Black treacle gives a dark, faintly bitter dumpling; golden syrup gives the sweeter result most modern palates expect.
- MixingAdd the water a little at a time until the dough just holds together. A wet, sticky suet dough spreads and disintegrates in the pot; a dry one stays leaden.
- "Boil as before"A rolling boil breaks the dumplings up. Keep the water at a bare simmer, and lower the balls in gently. They should have room to move and will swell by roughly half.
- Timing and sizeThe book's half to three-quarters of an hour is thirty to forty-five minutes, and it says plainly this varies with size, smaller balls at the shorter end. Test by lifting one out and splitting it: the centre should be spongy and dry-looking, not glossy or wet.
- ServingThe book gives no accompaniment. Custard, cream, warmed jam or a spoonful of syrup are the usual partners, and currants make it, in effect, a spotted-dick dough in dumpling form.
Boiled suet dough is one of the oldest and cheapest engines of the English kitchen: flour, hard fat and water, cooked in a pot that is already on the fire for something else. In Cassell's day the same dough did duty at both ends of a meal, plain with beef and gravy, or sugared and spiced as here to be eaten with custard, and the eightpence quoted for six servings is the reason it appears in a book aimed at households counting pennies. Beef kidney suet was a butcher's by-product, sold for very little, and its high melting point is what makes the technique work: the fat holds its shape while the flour sets around it, then melts out and leaves the crumb open. The currant version is close kin to spotted dick, and the treacle option points to the sugar-refining trade that had made molasses cheap in Victorian larders. Steamed puddings and puddings baked in basins are often said to have pushed the plain boiled dumpling off the domestic table in the twentieth century, though it survives in stews.