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Apple Roly-Poly
4 cups sifted Flour, Yolks of 4 Eggs, 2 whole eggs, 1 teaspoonful Salt, 1/2 cup Lard, 1/2 teaspoonful The Great "Arm & Hammer" Soda. 1 teaspoonful Nutmeg, 1 pt. sour Milk or Buttermilk.
Mix as described for Soda Biscuits (page 8) flour, lard, Soda, eggs, nutmeg, salt and sour milk or buttermilk. Roll out to a sheet about a half inch thick, wash with melted butter and spread over it finely chopped apples mixed with a pinch of cinnamon, half a grated lemon and a half cup of washed currants and a half cup of brown sugar. Roll up like jelly roll. Steam for about 40 minutes. Serve with cream sauce or juice from preserved fruit. Hard sauce can also be used. Other fruits such as berries, peaches, etc. instead of apples can be used.
A steamed suet-style pudding built on a soda biscuit dough rather than pastry, from an Arm & Hammer promotional booklet whose purpose was to sell baking soda. A few of its assumptions no longer hold.
- The hinge: keep the roll off the waterThe dough must steam in vapour, not boil in liquid. Wrap the roll loosely in buttered parchment or a floured cloth, tie the ends with room for expansion, and set it on a rack above simmering water in a covered pot. Contact with water gives a grey, sodden crust.
- Soda and sour milkThe soda is there to react with the acid in clabbered milk or true churned buttermilk. Half a teaspoon to a pint of liquid is on the low side by modern reckoning; cultured buttermilk from a carton is also milder than the naturally soured milk assumed here. A teaspoon of soda, or the same plus a teaspoon of baking powder, gives a more reliable lift.
- LardHalf a cup of lard rubbed into four cups of flour makes a short, tender dough. Leaf lard or a good rendered lard is closest to the original; unsalted butter or vegetable shortening works, though butter browns less well in steam.
- The eggsFour yolks plus two whole eggs in a biscuit dough is unusually rich and makes for a soft, sticky mass. Chill the dough for twenty minutes before rolling, and work on a well-floured cloth.
- A pint of sour milkTwo cups. With four yolks and two whole eggs also going in, hold back a little of the milk and add it only if the dough will not come together — flour absorbency varies more than the original assumes.
- NutmegA full teaspoon of grated nutmeg is assertive by current taste. Freshly grated, half that is plenty unless you want the dough itself to read as spiced.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants. "Washed" means rinsed to remove packing dust and grit; rinse and pat dry, or the wet fruit will streak the dough.
- TimingForty minutes suits a modest roll. A thick one made with the full quantity of dough wants an hour or more; test with a skewer through the centre, which should come out clean and hot.
- Yield and sauceThis quantity of dough is generous — enough for eight to ten servings, or two smaller rolls, which steam more evenly than one large one. Hard sauce is butter creamed with sugar and a little spirit or vanilla, served cold against the hot pudding.
Roly-poly is an English steamed pudding of the nineteenth century, a sheet of dough spread with jam or fruit, rolled, and boiled in a cloth — hence the nursery names "jam roly-poly" and, less kindly, a set of jocular names varying between "dead man's arm" and "dead man's leg," from the shape of the cloth-wrapped roll. The English original used suet crust; this American version swaps in a soda-raised biscuit dough, which is the whole point of its appearing here. Booklets like this one were given away by Church & Dwight, and the format suggests they were meant to show that their bicarbonate of soda could stand in for yeast and for the older pearlash and saleratus; the recipes are written to put soda into as many everyday dishes as possible. The pairing of soda with sour milk or buttermilk reflects a kitchen where milk soured on its own as a matter of course and the acid was a resource rather than a spoilage problem.