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Suet Dumplings
Rub into one quart flour, one-half pound beef suet, free of skin, and chopped very fine. Add a little salt, one teaspoonful of soda dissolved in buttermilk, one pound fruit, either apples, dried cherries, or dried peaches cut very fine, and sufficient water to make it into dough. Make it into dumplings half an inch thick, boil two or three hours, and eat with a sauce made of butter, sugar, and wine.--Mrs.G.S.
A plain boiled suet pudding in dumpling form, of the sort that filled out a winter dinner when fresh fruit was out of season. Most of what needs translating here is measurement and method rather than ingredients.
- Quart of flourFlour was measured by volume, not weight: a quart is 4 cups, roughly 1 lb / 500 g of all-purpose flour. Half a pound of suet to a quart of flour is a moderately rich ratio, lighter than a Christmas pudding.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys. Fresh suet must be stripped of its membrane and chopped or grated very fine, as directed; boxed shredded suet, sold dusted with flour, works directly. Frozen suet grates far more easily than room-temperature suet.
- Soda and buttermilkThe quantity of buttermilk is not given, only that the teaspoon of soda is dissolved in it. Take it as a few tablespoons, enough to dissolve the soda, with the rest of the liquid made up with water as the recipe says. The acid in the buttermilk is what activates the soda; plain milk will not do it.
- The fruitA pound of dried cherries or dried peaches is a large amount by modern prices, and modern dried fruit is generally moister and sweeter than period sun-dried fruit would have been. Apples are presumably meant raw, peeled and finely chopped. Dried fruit benefits from a short soak in warm water and a thorough drying before it goes in, or it will draw moisture from the dough.
- Shaping and boilingHalf an inch thick suggests flattened rounds rather than balls, dropped into a large pot of boiling water. Two or three hours reads more like the timing for a full-sized cloth-tied suet pudding; dumplings of this thickness should be cooked through in well under an hour, and long boiling risks their breaking apart. Keep the water at a bare, steady simmer so they do not knock each other to pieces.
- Boiling water levelThe pot needs to stay at least two-thirds full so the dumplings float freely. Add boiling water, never cold, as the level drops.
- The sauceButter, sugar and wine, in proportions the recipe leaves to the cook: about 4 oz butter creamed with 1 cup sugar, then thinned with a few tablespoons of sherry, madeira or a sweet white wine. Warm it gently; boiling will split it.
- YieldA quart of flour with this much suet and fruit should make roughly eight to ten dumplings, enough for six to eight at the end of a meal.
Suet puddings crossed to Virginia with English cookery and stayed useful in Southern kitchens: beef suet kept without refrigeration, dried fruit was what a household had in February, and a pot of boiling water was always going. The soda-and-buttermilk leavening places the recipe in the nineteenth century, when saleratus and then bicarbonate of soda took over from the long yeast risings or the quantities of eggs that earlier puddings depended on. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) was assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housewives, which is why this one carries the initials "Mrs. G. S." rather than a title; the book reads as a record of what a particular circle of households cooked. The wine sauce suggests this was meant as a dessert rather than a filler, and the same butter-sugar-wine mixture, made stiff instead of warm, is close kin to what cookbooks call hard sauce.