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Veal Pudding
Line a shallow pudding-basin with suet crust rolled to the thickness of half an inch, and leave the pastry an inch over the edge. Fill the dish with alternate layers of lean veal cut into neat pieces and ham thinly sliced, and sprinkle over each layer a little pepper and salt, and add pounded mace. Pour a quarter of a pint of veal gravy over the meat; lay a cover of pastry on the top, moisten the edge of the piece of pastry, draw it over the cover, and press the two closely together. Wring a pudding-cloth out of boiling water, flour it, and tie the basin loosely in it. Plunge the pudding in to fast-boiling water, and boil quickly until done enough. Take it up, let it stand a few minutes, turn it upon a dish, and serve very hot. A pound and a half of lean veal and half a pound of ham will make a moderate-sized pudding. Time to boil the pudding, two hours to two hours and a half. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A boiled suet pudding of the standard Victorian type, and the technique matters more than the filling. Two points decide whether it works: a crust with enough suet to stay tender through long boiling, and a covering that keeps water out of the basin.
- The quarter-pint of gravyAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so a quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, about two-thirds of a US cup. Veal gravy here means light veal stock, not a thickened sauce; unsalted chicken stock is the closest ready substitute.
- Suet crust proportionsThe book does not give them; the standard working ratio is 8 oz plain flour to 4 oz shredded suet, a good pinch of salt, and about 5 fl oz cold water to a soft but not sticky dough (a teaspoon of baking powder is a modern addition). For a 1.5 lb basin that quantity lines and covers with a little to spare.
- Sealing the basinA floured pudding cloth works, but a pleated round of baking parchment topped with pleated foil, tied under the rim with string and given a string handle, is easier to lift and just as watertight. The pleat gives the crust room to rise.
- "Boil quickly" needs qualifyingA hard rolling boil will slop water over the rim and batter the cloth. Keep the water at a steady strong simmer, with the basin standing on a trivet or folded cloth, and the water no more than two-thirds up the sides. Top up from a boiling kettle only, never with cold water.
- Two to two and a half hours is rightThat is not overcooking for this cut. Veal shoulder or shin cut into 1-inch pieces needs the full time to become tender inside a sealed crust, and the suet pastry needs it to cook through. Loin or escalope will go stringy; use stewing veal.
- The hamUse a raw or lightly cured cooked gammon, thinly sliced, rather than salt-cured country ham, and go carefully with the added salt on each layer. Between the ham and the stock the filling salts itself.
- Pounded maceGround mace, roughly a quarter-teaspoon in total, distributed over the layers. Nutmeg is a passable stand-in at half the quantity but is sweeter and more assertive.
- Turning outThe five-minute rest lets the crust firm and pull from the basin. If the pudding looks fragile, serve it from the basin with a napkin round it.
- Yield1.5 lb veal and 8 oz ham feeds four to five as the book says, with a plain vegetable and extra hot stock passed separately, since the pudding produces very little gravy of its own.
Boiled suet puddings, sweet and savoury alike, were the backbone of British cookery from the eighteenth century into the twentieth, and they exist because a pot of water over a fire was a more reliable piece of equipment than an oven. A basin lined with suet paste, sealed with a floured cloth and dropped into boiling water needed no regulated heat and could be left to itself for hours. Veal and ham was one of the standard pairings, the mild meat set against a salty cured one, and it appears in almost identical form in beefsteak-and-kidney and mutton puddings elsewhere in the same tradition. The costing of 2s 6d and the note that it serves four or five follow a formula shared by several household works of the period, and the recipe stretches a pound and a half of veal with ham, crust and gravy.