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Steamed Blueberry Dumpling
4 cups blueberries 2 cups sugar 1 teaspoon vinegar 1 tablespoon butter 2 cups flour 4 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt cup milk Mix flour, baking powder and salt; add butter, mix until mealy; add milk. Put sugar, berries and vinegar in bottom of buttered baking dish. Cover with flour mixture and steam forty-five minutes. Serve in dish in which it is cooked.
A cobbler in reverse: the fruit goes on the bottom with all the sugar, a rich biscuit dough on top, and the whole thing cooks in trapped steam rather than dry heat. Two things in the printed text need attention before you start.
- The missing milk quantityThe original reads simply "cup milk"; the fraction has dropped out. For 2 cups flour with butter rubbed in, 3/4 cup is the usual amount for a soft dough that can be spread over fruit; add it gradually and stop when the dough just holds together.
- How to steam itButter a deep dish, cover it tightly with a lid or foil, and set it on a rack in a large pot with an inch or two of simmering water. Keep the water below the rim and topped up so it does not boil dry in 45 minutes. A covered dish in a 350F oven gives a similar result but a slightly firmer crust.
- Butter quantityOne tablespoon for 2 cups flour is lean by modern biscuit standards; the mixture will look barely mealy. Three to four tablespoons gives a tenderer topping without changing the character of the dish.
- The sugarTwo cups of sugar to 4 cups of berries is period-typical and very sweet. One cup is plenty for most palates, and the fruit will still throw enough syrup to keep the underside of the dough moist.
- Why the vinegarA teaspoon of vinegar sharpens berries that have gone flat and sweet. Lemon juice does the same job and is less noticeable; use about a tablespoon.
- DonenessSteamed dough will not brown, so color tells you nothing. Test with a skewer through the topping — it should come out clean of raw batter — and check that the fruit beneath is bubbling.
- BerriesFrozen blueberries work; use them unthawed and expect to add five to ten minutes, since they chill the dish and release more liquid.
- YieldAbout six servings; a 2-quart dish suits the quantities. Serve straight from the cooking dish, as directed, with cream or a hard sauce.
Steamed puddings were a New England staple long after ovens became reliable, and it is often said that a pot on the stove was cheaper to run than a hot oven; the enclosed, moist heat also suits a suet or biscuit dough. This one belongs to the family of fruit "grunts," "slumps" and steamed dumplings recorded across nineteenth-century Massachusetts and Maine, where wild low-bush blueberries were gathered in quantity in July and August. Lowney's Cook Book (1907) was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and it carries a full general repertoire alongside its chocolate recipes — which is why a plain steamed berry pudding with no cocoa in it sits in the dessert chapter. The instruction to "serve in dish in which it is cooked" reads as practical rather than rustic, a steamed fruit pudding being an awkward thing to turn out.