For a small pudding take a pound of fresh beef suet. Clear it from the skin and the stringy fibres, and mince it as finely as possible. Sift into a large pan two pounds of fine flour, and add the suet gradually, rubbing it fine with your hands and mixing it thoroughly. Then pour in, by degrees, enough of cold water to make a stiff dough. Roll it out into a large even sheet. Have ready about a pound and a half of the best beef-steak, omitting the bone and fat which should be all cut off. Divide the steak into small thin pieces, and beat them well to make them tender. Season them with pepper and salt, and, if convenient, add some mushrooms. Lay the beef in the middle of the sheet of paste, and put on the top a bit of butter rolled in flour. Close the paste nicely over the meat as if you were making a large dumpling. Dredge with flour a thick square cloth, and tie the pudding up in it, leaving space for it to swell. Fasten the string very firmly, and stop up with flour the little gap at the tying-place so that no water can get in. Have ready a large pot of boiling water. Put the pudding into it, and let it boil fast three hours or more. Keep up a good fire under it, as if it stops boiling a minute the crust will be heavy. Have a kettle of boiling water at the fire to replenish the pot if it wastes too much. Do not take up the pudding till the moment before it goes to table. Mix some catchup with the gravy on your plate.
For a large pudding you must have two pounds of suet, three pounds of flour, and two pounds and a half of meat. It must boil at least five hours.
All the fat must be removed from the meat before it goes into the pudding, as the gravy cannot be skimmed when enclosed in the crust.
You may boil in the pudding some potatoes cut into slices.
A pudding of the lean of mutton chops may be made in the same manner; also of venison steaks.
Make a good paste in the proportion of a pound of butter to two pounds of sifted flour. Divide it in half, and line with one sheet of it the bottom and sides of a deep dish, which must first be well buttered. Have ready two pounds of the best beef-steak, cut thin, and well beaten; the bone and fat being omitted. Season it with pepper and salt. Spread a layer of the steak at the bottom of the pie, and on it a layer of sliced potato, and a few small bits of butter rolled in flour. Then another layer of meat, potato, &c., till the dish is full. You may greatly improve the flavour by adding mushrooms, or chopped clams or oysters, leaving out the hard parts. If you use clams or oysters, moisten the other ingredients with a little of their liquor. If not, pour in, at the last, half a pint of cold water, or less if the pie is small. Cover the pie with the other sheet of paste as a lid, and notch the edges handsomely, having reserved a little of the paste to make a flower or tulip to stick in the slit at the top. Bake it in a quick oven an hour and a quarter, or longer, in proportion to its size. Send it to table hot.
You may make a similar pie of mutton chops, or veal cutlets, or venison steaks, always leaving out the bone and fat.
Many persons in making pies stew the meat slowly in a little water till about half done, and they then put it with its gravy into the paste and finish by baking. In this case add no water to the pie, as there will be already sufficient liquid If you half-stew the meat, do the potatoes with it.