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Suet Pudding (VI)
Mrs. J. H. Mead.
Half pound stale bread crumbs, three-quarters of a pound of flour, ten or twelve ounces of beef suet, half a teaspoon of salt, two eggs well beaten, one cup milk; make into a smooth paste; add fruit if desired; boil three and a half hours.
A plain boiled suet pudding of the old English type: no sugar, no spice, no leavening, and a long spell in the pot. It is closer to a dumpling than a dessert unless you add the fruit and serve it with a sweet sauce.
- The hinge: keep the water at a bare simmerA boiled pudding must go into water already boiling and then be held at a steady simmer for the full time, with boiling water topped up as it evaporates. If the pot goes off the boil or the water level drops below the pudding, the centre stays raw and heavy.
- SuetTen to twelve ounces is fresh beef kidney fat, skinned of membrane and grated or chopped fine. Packaged shredded suet works directly; a solid piece from a butcher is easiest to grate half-frozen. Vegetable shortening behaves differently and gives a greasier crumb.
- Weights, not cupsThe dry goods are given by weight: 8 oz stale breadcrumbs, 12 oz flour (about 2 3/4 cups), 10-12 oz suet; only the milk is by volume. Weighing is worth the trouble here because the suet-to-flour ratio governs whether the pudding is light or leaden.
- "A smooth paste"One cup of milk with two eggs will give a stiff dough rather than a batter with this much dry weight. Add a little more milk if it will not come together; it should be soft enough to drop reluctantly from the spoon.
- Cloth or basinNineteenth-century cooks boiled these in a floured cloth tied with room to allow swelling. A greased 2-quart pudding basin with a pleated round of parchment and foil tied down is more manageable, though a covered basin heats more slowly than a cloth and may want a little longer.
- Fruit, if desiredThe original leaves quantity open. Half a pound to a pound of raisins, currants or chopped dried apple is the usual range for this size of pudding; toss the fruit in a spoonful of the flour so it does not sink.
- Steaming worksA covered basin set on a rack in a large pot with water halfway up the sides, lid on, will do the job, though steam is gentler than immersion and may need somewhat longer than the stated three and a half hours. Do not shorten it — suet needs the long, wet heat to melt out and leave the crumb open.
- Yield and servingThis makes a substantial pudding for eight to ten. Turn it out hot and serve with a hard sauce, a lemon sauce, or simply butter and sugar; leftovers slice cold and fry well in butter.
Boiled suet puddings were the workhorse of the English and Anglo-Canadian kitchen, and this one is about as plain as they come — bread, flour, fat, eggs and milk, with fruit only "if desired." The technique long predates domestic ovens: a pudding tied in a floured cloth could share the pot with the meat and vegetables over a single fire, and nineteenth-century collections often carry six or eight numbered variations on the same idea. Suet, the hard fat around beef kidneys, was cheap, kept well in a cool larder and melted at a high enough temperature to leave a light, spongy crumb rather than a greasy one. The Home Cook Book, compiled in Toronto in the 1870s from contributions by named local women, is usually described as an early Canadian community cookbook, and its many suet puddings reflect a settler kitchen still working largely by the pot rather than the range oven.