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Thanks Livewire (all of you). Making this dumpling for her grandsons was one of the strongest and fondest memories to get Nan to remember things, so its a bit of a mission to learn how to make it. Sincerely, my thanks.

Hi there, I have just checked out an old Farmhouse Kitchen recipe book where there are instruction for a rabbit/bacon/vegetable suet crust pudding.
8 oz self raising flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 4 oz shredded suet and 7 tablespoons water, but it is steamed in a heat proof bowl.
Many years ago my aunt made something similar by the same method and it was delicious. The suet pastry was pale.
Doing it in a cloth is like the Clootie Dumpling method and provided you dampen the cloth and flour it really well (put a plate in the bottom of the pot) it should work, but I think the pudding basin method is the easiest way to go.

Oxxx, yes i seem to remember my mum cooking these type of puddings for hours and hours that of course would make it more tasty, Gary Rhodes talks about suet puddings in his New British Classics book he says using fresh suet makes a difference to the flavour.

Hi Pam, thanks! it looks v. promising from the online descriptions and will see if library/bookshop has it.
My main concern is the suet pastry and the method of cooking it in a cloth. It was literally wrapped in a tea towel and boiled for hours. Do you (or Keith?) have any experience. I have looked and there are lots of sweet puddings that do this method but so far have only found one online 'rasher puddin' which is a bacon roly poly. This listed the suet pastry with squeeze of lemon & rind. Other boiled 'sweet' puddings seem to list suet pastry with milk and white breadcrumbs. Even though I loved english puddings I've never made one. I showed hubby the Delia suet puddings, he said that his Nan's were much more pale looking. Is this just the cooking method rather than the ingredients?

Oxxx i have a book by M. Patten called Victory Cook Book, it has a couple of pages of corned beef recipes, i think from what you have said that Gran did indeed adapt the recipe over the years as it seem to resemble several recipes in the book.

Thank you for looking, Keith. I think its definitely a war time thing which she just kept on making but with better ingredients inside. My hubby's always said that its not much to look but tastes 'magic'.

Sorry Oxxx, have just perused my Mrs Beeton's cook book & also Marguerite Patten's Century of Cooking in the hope of finding this recipe for you. No luck I'm afraid. If I was to find it anywhere in my collection, I thought it would be in one of these two books. It seems it's likely to be one of your nan's own recipes. Sorry I couldn't have been of help. :-(