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Apple Dumplings
Make a paste the same as for rich baking powder biscuit, roll thin and cut three or four inches square, place good tart apples in the center, pared and quartered, draw the dough around them. Lay close together on a greased dish and steam for thirty minutes. Serve with hard sauce.
A steamed dumpling rather than a baked one, and the brevity of the original assumes a cook who already knows biscuit dough. The points below fill in the numbers the book leaves out.
- The dough"Rich baking powder biscuit" means roughly 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt and 4-6 tablespoons butter or lard rubbed in, with about ¾ cup milk. "Rich" is the signal for the higher end of the fat; roll to about ¼ inch, thinner than you would for biscuits.
- Steaming, not baking"Steam" here means in a covered steamer or a colander set over simmering water, not in the oven. The greased dish keeps them from sticking and catches the juice; keep the lid on and the water at a steady simmer.
- Apple choice"Good tart apples" meant a firm cooking apple that softens well in half an hour; Bramley collapses to a purée, while Granny Smith and Northern Spy hold their shape more. A dense modern eating apple such as Honeycrisp may still be firm when the dough is done.
- Cut the quarters downQuarters of a large apple may well not cook through in thirty minutes. Use quarters of a small apple, or slice the quarters. A spoonful of sugar and a pinch of cinnamon in the center is a common addition, though this recipe does not call for it.
- SealingBring the four corners of the square to the top and pinch the seams firmly. Steam pressure will open a lazy seal and the apple will escape into the dish.
- Timing checkThirty minutes is right for small apples cut thin; test with a skewer through the dough into the fruit. The dough should be set and dry to the touch, not gummy.
- Hard sauceHard sauce of this period is creamed butter and powdered sugar, about 1 part butter to 2-3 parts sugar, flavored with vanilla, nutmeg or brandy and chilled firm. It is meant to melt over the hot dumpling, so make it in advance and keep it cold.
- YieldTwo cups of flour gives six to eight squares of three or four inches, so six to eight dumplings — one apiece, two for large appetites.
Apple dumplings belong to the older English and American tradition of boiled and steamed puddings, where a pastry or suet crust was wrapped around fruit and cooked in a cloth or steamer rather than an oven — practical in a kitchen where the fire was needed for other things and oven heat was hard to hold steady. By the time of the late nineteenth-century household manuals, chemical leavening had displaced yeast in many such crusts, and a "rich baking powder biscuit" paste like this one is often said to be an American substitution: quick to mix, forgiving, and reliant on the tin of baking powder that spread gradually through kitchens over the second half of the century. The hard sauce served with it is the same period's standard accompaniment to steamed puddings, and its usefulness was practical as well as culinary — creamed butter and sugar keeps well in a cold larder and needs no cooking at the last minute.