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Dumplings (Cups flour teaspoons baking)
2 cups flour 4 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons butter 3/4 cup milk Mix and sift dry ingredients. Work in butter with tips of fingers, and add milk gradually, using a knife for mixing. Toss on a floured board, pat, and roll out to one-half inch in thickness. Shape with biscuit-cutter, first dipped in flour. Place closely together in a buttered steamer, put over kettle of boiling water, cover closely, and steam twelve minutes. A perforated tin pie-plate may be used in place of steamer. A little more milk may be used in the mixture, when it may be taken up by spoonfuls, dropped and cooked on top of stew. In this case some of the liquid must be removed, that dumplings may rest on meat and potato, and not settle into liquid.
A plain steamed baking-powder dumpling, written to sit on top of a beef stew. The recipe gives two methods: cut rounds steamed over water, or a slacker dough dropped straight onto the meat.
- The hinge: keep the lid onSteam dumplings rise from trapped steam, and lifting the cover part-way through drops the temperature and collapses them. Set the timer for twelve minutes and leave the pan alone until it rings.
- Don't let them touch the liquidThe instruction to ladle out some stew broth so the dumplings rest on meat and potato is the whole trick to the dropped version. Dumplings sitting in simmering liquid poach into a gluey mass on the underside instead of steaming.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons to two cups of flour is about double what a modern recipe would call for. Some period powders may have been less reliable than today's double-acting powder; at this ratio you may notice a bitter, soda-ish edge.
- ButterTwo teaspoons is a very small amount of fat, which is likely why these are firm and bready rather than tender. Modern versions of this sort of dumpling often use closer to two tablespoons.
- FlourHousehold flour of the period is often said to have been softer and lower in protein than modern all-purpose, though this varied by region and mill. Handle the dough as little as the recipe implies — pat and roll once — or the gluten tightens and the dumplings turn tough.
- The improvised steamerA perforated tin pie-plate set over a kettle works because the dumplings need rising steam and no direct contact with water. Any steamer insert, a metal colander, or a rack in a covered pot does the same job.
- MilkThree-quarters of a cup gives a stiff, rollable dough. For the dropped version add milk a tablespoon at a time until the batter falls thickly from a spoon but still holds its shape.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; a two-inch cutter should produce roughly a dozen or so dumplings, enough to accompany a stew for a family.