Bedfordshire clanger

The clanger is an elongated suet crust dumpling, sometimes described as a savoury type of roly-poly pudding.[5][6] Its name may refer to its dense consistency: Wright's 19th-century English Dialect Dictionary recorded the phrase "clung dumplings" from Bedfordshire, citing "clungy" and "clangy" as adjectives meaning heavy or close-textured.[4]

It was traditionally boiled in a cloth like other suet puddings,[7] though some modern recipes use a shortcrust or other pastry and suggest baking it like a pasty, a method dating from a 1990s revival of the dish by a commercial bakery.[8] The dumpling can be filled with liver and onion,[9] bacon and potatoes,[3] pork and onions,[10] or other meat and vegetables, and flavoured with the garden herb sage.

Usually a savoury dish, clangers were also said to have been prepared with a sweet filling, such as jam or fruit, in one end; this variant is referred to in a Bedfordshire Magazine of the 1960s as an "'alf an' 'alf" (half and half), with "clanger" reserved for a savoury version.[6] A 1959 reference also suggests that clangers were usually savoury, stating that the version with a sweet filling in one end was called the Trowley Dumpling after the hamlet in west Hertfordshire where it was supposed to have originated.[11][1] There is some doubt as to how often a sweet filling was traditionally added in practice,[10] though modern recipes often imitate the folklore by including one.

Clangers were historically made by women for their husbands to take to their agricultural work as a midday meal: it has been suggested that the crust was not originally intended for consumption but to protect the fillings from the soiled hands of the workers.[12] They could be eaten cold, or warmed by being wrapped in damp newspaper under a brazier.[1] While sometimes associated with the hatmakers of the Luton district,[13] the same dish was also recorded in rural Buckinghamshire,[3] Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire.[1] It is still available at various bakers and served at some cafes, restaurants and local places of interest.

A similar dumpling was known in parts of Buckinghamshire, particularly Aylesbury Vale, as a "Bacon Badger".[3] It was made from bacon, potatoes and onions, flavoured with sage and enclosed in a suet pastry case, and was usually boiled in a cloth.[14][13] The etymology of "badger" is unknown, but might relate to a former term for a dealer in flour.[15] "Badger" was widely used in the Midland counties in the early 19th century to refer to a "cornfactor, mealman, or huckster".[16] The same basic suet dumpling recipe is known by a variety of other names elsewhere in the country; "flitting pudding" is recorded in County Durham, "dog in blanket" from Derbyshire,[17] and "bacon pudding" in Berkshire and Sussex.

A baked "clanger" featured as a signature bake in episode 8 of Series 8 of The Great British Bake Off.

• Pasty
• List of pastries

• Recipe from Bedford