Apple Dumplings

A bare-bones Victorian formula that assumes you already know how to make a suet crust and how to handle a pudding cloth. The apples matter more than anything else here: a firm dessert apple will sit whole and raw inside a cooked crust.

• CodlinsAn old English group of cooking apples, long since displaced in shops. Any apple that collapses to a fluff when cooked will do the same job; in practice a Bramley or another tart cooking apple. Note that the recipe itself calls for large apples.
• The crust the book assumesA suet paste of roughly 8 oz flour to 4 oz shredded suet, a good pinch of salt and enough cold water to bind, one of the common pudding proportions of the period; the recipe also allows a butter crust. Roll it thin and pinch the seams closed on top so no water gets in.
• TimingTwenty to thirty minutes is on the short side for a suet crust around a whole raw apple, and with the large apples the recipe specifies you may want longer. Test by piercing through the crust with a skewer; the fruit should offer no resistance.
• The clothScald the cloth, wring it out, flour the inside well and tie it loosely so the paste can swell. A pleat in the cloth gives it room. Modern practice is often to wrap each dumpling in floured baking parchment and then a foil layer, twisted at the ends.
• Baked insteadThe book gives no oven term and no temperature; it says only that they may be baked. A modern equivalent would be a moderate oven, around 350F, for 40 to 50 minutes until the crust is dry and pale gold. Shortcrust or rough puff tends to behave better in the oven than suet.
• Fill the holeThe recipe scoops the core and says nothing about what goes in it. Sugar and a clove, or sugar with a strip of lemon peel, appears in other recipes of the period.
• YieldThe recipe gives no yield; one dumpling per person is the usual serving. Serve hot with custard, cream, or plain sweetened butter.