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WHITE PUDDINGS (another way) (Take eight ounces of beef suet)
Take eight ounces of beef suet, eight ounces of oatmeal, one ounce and a half of onion shredded very small, an eighth of an ounce of salt, an eighth of an ounce of ground black pepper; mix these ingredients thoroughly without water, and tie them up tightly in a cloth. Boil slowly for an hour and a half in an open saucepan, keeping the pudding always under water, which must be boiling when it is put in.
A plain mealie pudding: four ingredients, no binder, no casing. The whole thing hinges on keeping the mixture dry and the cloth tight, so the oatmeal swells against itself rather than dissolving into the pot.
- Use the right oatmeal"Oatmeal" here means pinhead or medium-cut oats, not rolled oats or instant. Rolled oats collapse into paste in ninety minutes of boiling and the pudding will not slice.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard kidney fat, chopped or grated fine, not the fat trimmed off a steak. Packaged shredded suet works; if it is the vegetarian sort the flavour is duller but the structure holds.
- The weights in modern termsEight ounces each of suet and oatmeal is about 225 g each; an ounce and a half of onion is a small onion, finely minced. An eighth of an ounce is roughly 3.5 g — call it three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt, and about a teaspoon and a half of ground black pepper, which is deliberately assertive.
- "Without water" is the instruction that mattersDo not moisten the mixture at all. The oatmeal takes up water through the cloth as it cooks, and any liquid added at the mixing stage turns the interior to porridge.
- Preparing the clothScald a square of cotton or muslin, wring it out and dust the inside with flour before filling. The recipe says to tie tightly; note that the oatmeal swells as it cooks, so a drum-tight cloth risks splitting.
- Keeping it under waterAn open pan of boiling water at a bare simmer for an hour and a half, with the pudding weighted or held down by a saucer so no part of it sits proud. A dry patch cooks to raw grit. Top up with boiling water, never cold.
- Yield and servingA little over a pound of mixture before cooking, and heavier once the oatmeal has taken up water; enough for four as a side dish. It is best turned out, cooled until firm, then sliced thick and fried in bacon fat or dripping until crusted on both sides.
White pudding is the bloodless partner to black pudding: the same tradition of stretching a little fat and seasoning with a lot of cereal, minus the blood. In Scotland the oatmeal version is still sold as mealie pudding or skirlie's near relation, and in Ireland and the West Country similar mixtures bound with oats or breadcrumbs go into casings as white pudding and hog's pudding. Cassell's gives it in the boiled-in-a-cloth form ecame produproduced everything from suet dumplings to Christmas pudding.