Lemon Dumplings
INGREDIENTS for 6 dumplings. Ib. of grated bread, lb. of chopped suet, lb. of moist sugar, 2 eggs, 1 large lemon. AVERAGE COST, 7d. INGREDIENTS for 6 dumplings.—1/2 lb. of grated bread, 1/4 lb. of chopped suet, 1/4 lb. of moist sugar, 2 eggs, 1 large lemon. AVERAGE COST, 7d.
Mix the bread, suet and moist sugar well together, adding the lemon-peel, which should be very finely minced. Moisten with the eggs and strained lemon-juice; stir well and put the mixture into small buttered cups. Tie them down and boil for 3/4 hour. Turn them out on a dish, strew sifted sugar over them and serve with wine sauce.
TIME. hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
LEMON MINCEMEAT.
A steamed suet pudding in miniature, set in teacups rather than a basin. The method is sound; the quantities as printed have lost their fractions, so treat the proportions below as a guide rather than a transcription.
- The missing weightsThe three main weights are given only as "lb." with the fraction gone, and the total time at the foot has lost its fraction too. Equal pound weights of all three would be unworkable; a plausible working reconstruction is roughly 1/2 lb (225 g) grated bread to 1/4 lb (110 g) each of suet and sugar for 2 eggs and 1 lemon, but this is an editorial guess, not a transcription. Weigh by that ratio and adjust with a little more egg or juice if the mix will not hold together.
- Grated breadThis means dry, stale white crumb grated on a box grater, not soft fresh crumbs and not packaged dried crumbs, which are too fine and drink up liquid. Day-old bread left uncovered for a few hours, crusts off, grated coarse, is the right texture.
- SuetBeef suet from a butcher, chopped fine with a little flour to stop it clumping, or packaged shredded suet. Vegetarian shredded suet behaves much the same. Frozen butter grated coarse is a workable substitute, though the crumb will be denser.
- Moist sugarAn unrefined soft brown sugar with some molasses still in it. Light muscovado is the closest modern match; caster sugar will work but loses the faint caramel note.
- Lemon peelMince only the yellow zest, no white pith, and do it very fine or you get bitter threads through the pudding. A microplane makes this easier than a knife.
- "Tie them down"Butter the cups, fill them about three-quarters full, and cover each with a round of buttered baking parchment or foil tied with string, pleated across the top to allow rise. Stand them in a pan of simmering water reaching halfway up the cups, lid on, and top up with boiling water as it goes down.
- TimingThree-quarters of an hour at a steady simmer is right for teacup-sized moulds. Larger moulds need proportionally longer; test with a skewer, which should come out clean and hot.
- Wine saucePeriod wine sauce is a sweetened sherry or madeira sauce, usually thickened lightly with butter and flour or with egg yolk. Custard or a simple lemon syrup serves the same purpose if you would rather not.
- YieldSix small dumplings, as the ingredient line states.
Suet puddings were a staple of English domestic sweets through much of the nineteenth century, economical of fuel because they could share a pot with something else on the range and forgiving of imprecise timing. Making them in individual cups, as here, gave a pudding that could be turned out neat and dusted with sifted sugar, though the book does not say why the form was chosen. The costing of sevenpence and the note that the dish is seasonable at any time are characteristic of the Beeton apparatus, with its address to a household budget as much as to the cook.