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Lemon Dumplings
These dumplings may be made in two ways; by using a soft, sweet biscuit dough, cutting out as for large biscuits, placing in the centre of each a teaspoonful of lemon marmalade, and tying in large squares of cotton or linen, and dropping in boiling water for forty-five minutes (these may be baked, instead), or by the following recipe: Mix thoroughly a half-pound of bread, grated, one-fourth pound each of sugar and suet, the grated rind of two and juice of one lemon; one grated, tart apple or cup of tart pineapple, and two tablespoons of flour rubbed smooth in two wellbeaten eggs. Tie in squares of cloth and boil three-fourths of an hour, putting plate underneath to prevent sticking. Serve with the following sauce:
Two routes to the same idea: a filled biscuit dough, or a proper boiled suet pudding divided into individual cloths. The second is the more interesting and the more exacting, and it hinges entirely on how the cloths are prepared.
- Flour the clothsScald the squares of cotton or linen, wring them out, then dust the damp inner face generously with flour before filling. The flour and water form a skin that keeps the pudding from waterlogging; an unfloured cloth gives a slack, soggy dumpling. Tie with kitchen string, leaving room for the mixture to swell by about a quarter.
- Weights into cupsHalf a pound of grated bread is roughly 4 cups of fresh crumbs, loosely packed. A quarter pound of sugar is about half a cup; a quarter pound of suet is about a scant cup shredded. Use day-old bread grated on a box grater rather than dry commercial crumbs, which absorb far too much liquid.
- SuetBeef suet is the traditional fat and is still sold shredded in some markets and by butchers as raw kidney fat. Frozen butter grated on the coarse holes is the usual substitute; the pudding will be a little richer and less springy.
- Keep the water at a rolling boilA slack simmer lets the dumplings sit heavy. Keep the pot boiling steadily the whole 45 minutes and top up with boiling water, never cold, so the temperature does not drop. The plate the recipe calls for in the second method keeps the cloths off the base of the pan.
- Lemon marmalade in the first versionThis means a thick lemon preserve, not lemon curd, which would thin and leak. Any stiff citrus marmalade works. Marmalade set with pectin holds its shape better through three-quarters of an hour of boiling than a loose homemade one.
- If you bake insteadThe recipe gives no oven temperature or time, only that these 'may be baked, instead'; a hot oven of around 400F for roughly 20 minutes, until the tops are golden and the base is set, is a reasonable modern reading. Seal the dough firmly around the filling or the marmalade will run out and caramelise on the sheet.
- PineappleUse tart pineapple chopped fine rather than fruit canned in heavy syrup. Fresh pineapple contains bromelain, an enzyme that digests protein, so it is sensible to mix and get the dumplings into the water promptly rather than let the batter stand.
- Yield and the missing sauceThe suet mixture makes about six to eight dumplings. The promised sauce did not travel with the page: a hard sauce of butter, powdered sugar and lemon juice, or a simple lemon-sugar syrup thickened with a little cornstarch, is what the period expected.
Boiled puddings tied in individual cloths were the everyday English answer to a dessert before every kitchen had a reliable oven — one pot on the fire, and the pudding cooked alongside or after the meat. The pattern here is the classic suet-and-breadcrumb pudding, lightened with grated apple for acid and moisture, and pushed toward the lemon by rind, juice and marmalade. The alternative biscuit-dough method, and the casual note that these "may be baked, instead," catch the moment when the cookstove was displacing the cloth and the boiling pot.