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Fruit Dumplings
Roll out sufficient suet-crust to make eight dumplings, cut it into rounds four inches in diameter, fill each one separately with different kinds of fruits, put on the top of each a little mixture made with a tablespoonful of sifted breadcrumbs mixed with an egg, sweetened with sugar and flavored with grated lemon peel; roll up to form balls, tie each one separately in a cloth, and boil for forty-five minutes. When done, turn it out, pour over a wine sauce, and serve.
Oscar assumes a cook who already knows how to make suet crust and boil a pudding in a cloth; the recipe is essentially a set of proportions. The points below fill in what he left out.
- Suet crust proportionsA common period ratio is around 2 parts flour to 1 part shredded suet by weight, though recipes of the day range up to 3 or 4 parts flour, with a good pinch of salt and enough cold water to bring it to a firm dough — roughly 1 lb flour, 8 oz suet and something like 250 ml water would give eight four-inch rounds. Packaged shredded beef suet is still sold; frozen grated butter is one common substitute, though it gives a shorter, less springy crust.
- Four-inch rounds are smallA four-inch circle of crust rolled about 1/4 inch thick holds only a tablespoon or two of fruit once gathered up into a ball. Do not overfill or the seam will split in the water. Pinch the gathered edges hard and roll the ball between the palms to seal.
- The breadcrumb capThe tablespoon of sifted crumbs bound with egg, sugar and lemon zest sits on top of the fruit inside the crust. Oscar gives no reason for it, but it most likely serves to absorb the juice fruit throws off during boiling, which is what otherwise blows a dumpling apart. Best treated as structural rather than decorative.
- "Different kinds of fruits"The intent is a plate of eight dumplings, each with its own filling — apple, plum, cherry, gooseberry, apricot, whatever the season gives. Firm fruit should be peeled and cut small; stone fruit must be pitted. Sweeten each filling to taste, as the crust itself is unsweetened.
- Boiling in a clothScald the cloths, wring them out, flour the inside surface well, then tie each dumpling loosely enough to allow the crust to swell but tightly enough that water does not enter. Keep the pot at a steady simmer with the dumplings fully covered, and top up with boiling water, never cold. Forty-five minutes is accurate for this size.
- Wine sauceA sweet pouring wine sauce of this period is typically sugar and butter creamed, thinned with sherry or Madeira and warmed gently, sometimes thickened with a little cornstarch or an egg yolk. Do not let an egg-thickened version approach a boil.
- YieldEight dumplings, one per person as a substantial dessert. They are best served the moment they come out of the cloth, as suet crust firms up unpleasantly as it cools.
Suet-crust dumplings boiled in a floured cloth are English kitchen practice of long standing, carried into American hotel cookery more or less intact; the cloth-boiled pudding predates the pudding basin and was a standard method through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The instruction to fill each of the eight with a different fruit reads as a hotel flourish — a plate that shows off the larder — though the recipe itself says nothing about how domestic cooks handled the dish. Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf's dining rooms from 1893, and his 1896 book gathers this sort of plain Anglo-American boiled pudding alongside the French service dishes the hotel was better known for.