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Lemon Dumplings
Mince one-half pound of beef-suet very fine, then mix with it one-half pound of grated breadcrumbs, one-fourth pound of sugar, and the grated peel of one lemon; stir all together well with two beaten eggs. From the preparation into dumplings, and boil them, tied in cloths, for three-quarters of an hour.
A suet pudding in miniature: no flour, no leavening, held together by egg and the swelling of the crumbs. It stands or falls on how tightly the cloths are tied.
- The cloth is the whole techniqueScald squares of cotton or muslin, wring them out, and dust the inside generously with flour before wrapping each dumpling. The damp flour forms a skin that keeps water out; an unfloured cloth lets the dumpling absorb water and collapse into porridge. Tie with string, leaving a little slack for expansion.
- Weights, in cupsHalf a pound of suet is about 1 1/2 cups minced; half a pound of breadcrumbs is roughly 4 cups of soft fresh crumbs or about 2 cups of dry; a quarter pound of sugar is a generous 1/2 cup. If you use dry commercial crumbs the mixture will be stiffer and drier; soft crumbs from a day-old loaf give a lighter result, though 'grated breadcrumbs' in books of this period often meant grated stale bread.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys, not ordinary trimmings. Ask a butcher, or use packaged shredded suet, which is already fine enough to skip the mincing. Frozen suet grates far more easily than fresh. Vegetable shortening will work but gives a softer, blander crumb.
- "From the preparation"A printer's slip for "Form the preparation" — shape the mixture into dumplings. Golf-ball size suits the stated three-quarters of an hour; larger dumplings would need longer to cook through.
- The waterLower them into water already at a full boil and keep it at a steady boil throughout, topping up with boiling water as needed. A pot that goes off the boil produces heavy, greasy dumplings.
- Missing lemonOnly the grated peel goes in, which gives aroma but no acidity. Other versions of the dish add the juice as well, or carry it in the sauce; the recipe as printed will taste sweeter and flatter than the name suggests.
- ServingOscar gives no sauce. These want something sharp and hot poured over — a lemon or wine sauce, or simply sugar and lemon juice. Unwrap immediately on lifting from the pot or they steam themselves soggy in the cloth.
- YieldAbout eight to ten dumplings, serving four to five as dessert. They are rich; small portions.
Boiled suet dumplings tied in floured cloths are English kitchen practice of long standing, the same family as the roly-poly and the Christmas pudding, and lemon dumplings appear under that name in nineteenth-century English cookery books well before Oscar Tschirky compiled his own. Their presence in Tschirky's cook book of 1896, published when the hotel was still the Waldorf and the Astoria wing had yet to open, is a reminder that the hotel's kitchen served a clientele raised on Anglo-American home cooking as much as on French service: alongside the terrapin and the truffled game sit puddings a farmhouse cook would recognise. The cloth method was in time largely displaced by the pudding basin, and the technique survives mainly in traditional Christmas pudding recipes today.