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Meat Rolly Polly
Make about one quart of baking powder crust, roll it out nearly an inch thick, then spread it with very finely chopped and well seasoned meat, roll it over and over, pinch the ends well together and steam one hour; then have a nice drawn butter made, and when served, slice it and pour some of the gravy over it.
A steamed suet-free pudding roll built on baking powder dough, the savoury cousin of the jam roly-poly. Two things in the original need translating: the dough is measured by volume, and "drawn butter" is not melted butter.
- Use cooked meatThe recipe does not say whether the chopped meat is raw or cooked, though cold roast or boiled meat, seasoned and moistened, suits the method. An hour of steaming will not reliably bring raw minced meat inside a thick dough cylinder to a safe temperature, so start with meat that is already cooked, or cook the filling through in a pan and cool it before spreading.
- "About one quart of baking powder crust"The quart is a volume measure, but the original does not say whether it counts the flour or the made dough; a quart of flour (about 4 cups) with 4 teaspoons baking powder, a teaspoon salt, 4-6 tablespoons cold butter or lard, and about 1 1/4 cups milk gives a workable amount. Mix to a soft biscuit dough and handle it as little as possible.
- Roll thinner than an inchAn inch of biscuit dough will not cook through in the middle of a steamed roll. Roll to about 1/2 inch, leave a clear border of an inch on all sides, and keep the meat layer thin so the spiral holds together.
- Sealing and wrappingPinch the long seam and both ends firmly, then wrap loosely in parchment and foil, or in a floured cloth, leaving room for the dough to expand. Seam side down in the steamer.
- SteamingOne hour over steadily boiling water is right for a roll of this size. Keep the water at a rolling boil the whole time and top it up with boiling water; a lull in the steam gives a dense, gummy crust.
- Drawn butterIn this period drawn butter is a butter sauce thickened with flour, not simply melted butter: about 2 tablespoons butter cooked with 1 1/2 tablespoons flour, then a cup of hot water or meat stock whisked in and simmered a few minutes, with salt and pepper. Meat stock in place of water makes it a gravy worth pouring.
- YieldA quart of dough makes one roll serving four to six, cut into thick slices.
Roly-poly puddings belong to the nineteenth-century British tradition of steamed rolls made from suet or biscuit dough, usually spread with jam and boiled in a cloth; American cookbooks adapted the form freely, and the savoury version here is essentially a way of making a supper dish out of cold meat. A steamed roll needed no oven at a time when firing up the range again for one dish was an extravagance. The reliance on baking powder rather than suet also points to a date after commercial chemical leavening had become cheap and widely available in American kitchens in the second half of the century.