What is "rag pudding"

n. An old-fashioned English savoury dish of minced meat and onions wrapped in suet pastry and boiled or steamed.

Rag pudding (also known as Rag pie) is a savoury dish consisting of minced meat and onions wrapped in a suet pastry, which is then cooked in a cheesecloth. The dish was invented during the 19th century in Oldham, a former mill town in Lancashire, previously at the centre of England's cotton industry. Rag pudding pre-dates ceramic basins and plastic boiling bags in cookery, and so the cotton or muslin rag cloths common in Oldham were used in the dish's preparation. Rag pudding is similar in composition and preparation to steak and kidney pudding, and may be purchased from traditional local butcher's shops in Greater Manchester.