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Suet Pudding (to serve with Roast Meat)
INGREDIENTS for pudding for 6 persons. -1 lb. of flour, 6 oz. of finelychopped suet, saltspoonful of salt , saltspoonful of pepper, 1/2 pint of water. AVERAGE COST, 5d.
Chop the suet very finely after freeing it from skin, and mix it well with the flour; add the salt and pepper (this latter ingredient may be omitted if the flavour is not liked), and make the whole into a smooth paste with the above proportion of water.
Tie the pudding in a floured cloth, or put it into a buttered basin, and boil from 2 to 3 hours. To enrich it, substitute 2 beaten eggs for some of the water, and increase the proportion of suet.
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SUET PUDDING.
TIME.-2 to 3 hours.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Note. When there is a joint roasting or baking, this pudding may be boiled in a long shape, and then cut into slices a few minutes before dinner is served; these slices should be laid in the dripping-pan for a minute or two, and then browned before the fire. Most children like this accompaniment to roast meat.
A plain boiled suet paste, served in slices alongside a roast to stretch the meat. It is closer to a dumpling than to a dessert pudding, and it depends entirely on the suet being cut fine enough to melt into the flour.
- The hinge: chopping the suetFresh beef suet must be stripped of membrane and chopped to something near breadcrumb size, or it renders out in lumps and leaves cavities. Packet shredded suet (beef or vegetarian) works directly and is easier to find than fresh; freeze a block of fresh suet for twenty minutes and it chops far more easily.
- Quantities1 lb flour is about 3 1/2 cups; 6 oz suet is a scant 1 1/4 cups shredded. Half a pint in a British book of this date is 10 fl oz, roughly 1 1/4 US cups. Add the water gradually — flours vary and you want a firm paste, not a batter.
- A saltspoonfulA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon. A quarter teaspoon of salt to a pound of flour is meagre by modern taste; a full teaspoon is closer to what a savoury pudding needs.
- Cloth or basinFor a cloth, scald it, wring it, flour the inside well and tie loosely to allow swelling. For a basin, butter it, cover with pleated parchment and foil and tie down. Either way the pudding sits on a trivet or folded cloth in the pan, water halfway up, kept at a steady simmer and topped up with boiling water.
- The time is realTwo to three hours is not an exaggeration for a pudding this size; the suet needs long moist heat to melt through and the starch in the flour to gelatinise. A smaller pudding will take proportionately less. Keep the water at a steady simmer and topped up with boiling water, or the paste turns heavy.
- The long shape and browningBoiled in a sausage shape in a cloth, then sliced and set in the dripping-pan to crisp, this becomes the best part of the dish. In a modern kitchen, slice about 1/2 inch thick, lay the slices in hot roasting-tin fat and give them 8-10 minutes at 425F, turning once.
- Cost and yield5d. is the book's own price for the whole pudding, not a modern guide. It serves six as an accompaniment, generously — expect leftovers, which fry well the next day.
- The enriched versionReplacing part of the water with two beaten eggs and increasing the suet, as the recipe directs without naming a quantity, gives a lighter, more tender crumb. With eggs in it, watch the boil is steady rather than fierce.
Suet pudding served with the joint belongs to the older English habit of putting a starch under or beside roasting meat to catch the fat and fill the table cheaply — the same logic that produced Yorkshire pudding, which is traditionally said to have been cooked beneath the spit. Beeton's book is full of these economies: suet was a butcher's by-product and cheap, and a pound of flour with six ounces of it is costed here at 5d. for six people. The note that the slices should be browned in the dripping-pan and that "most children like this accompaniment" suggests a household in which the roast was made to go further. The plain savoury version faded in the twentieth century as meat grew cheaper, though the same paste survives in suet crusts for steak and kidney pudding and in dumplings dropped into stew.