Clootie Dumpling

The clootie dumpling is Scotland's great festive boiled pudding, named for the cloot, the Scots word for cloth, in which it is tied and boiled. It belongs to the same medieval family of suet-and-dried-fruit boiled puddings as the English Christmas pudding, but it is distinctively Scottish in its use of wheat flour and oatmeal together, in its heavy spicing, and in the characteristic floury skin that forms where the pudding meets the cloth. Traditionally made for Christmas, Hogmanay and Burns Night, the dumpling was a way to stretch flour, suet and dried fruit into a celebratory dish that would feed a household for days, the long boiling sterilising and preserving it. Tokens, a coin, a ring, a thimble, were wrapped in paper and hidden in the dumpling as fortune-telling favours for the children, a custom shared with the English plum pudding. Served hot with custard or, cold the next day, sliced and fried with bacon or in a frying pan with butter, the clootie dumpling remains a centerpiece of the Scottish festive table.

A dense, dark, moist dome with a distinctive floury pale skin where it met the cloth, the interior packed with dried fruit, suet and warm spice, sweet and richly spiced. Eaten hot with custard, or cold and fried in slices.

The cloot, the cloth, is the defining technique. A large square of cotton or linen is floured generously on one side, the flour coating forms the pudding's skin during boiling. The dumpling mix of flour, oatmeal, shredded suet, brown sugar, mixed spice, and a heavy hand of dried fruit and candied peel is bound with egg and a little milk to a soft dropping consistency, then either wrapped in the floured cloth, or traditionally the cloth is laid in a bowl, the mixture mounded in, and the cloth gathered and tied tightly with string, leaving room for the pudding to swell. It is lowered into a large pan of boiling water and boiled for 3 to 4 hours, kept submerged, the water never allowed to go off the boil. The long boil sets the flour and suet into a dense mass, plumps the fruit, and the flour on the cloth gelatinises into the characteristic pale skin. Once cooked it is unwrapped, the skin dried off, and served.