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Apple Roley Poley
Peel, quarter and core sour apples, make rich soda-biscuit dough, (or raised-biscuit dough may be used if rolled thinner), roll to half an inch thick, slice the quarters, and lay on the prepared paste or crust, roll up, tuck ends in, prick deeply with a fork, lay in a steamer and place over a kettle of boiling water, cook an hour and three-quarters. Or, wrap in a cloth, tie up the ends and baste up sides, put in kettle of boiling water, and boil an hour and a half or more, keeping the water boiling constantly. Cut across, and eat with sweetened cream or butter and sugar. Cherries, dried fruit, any kind of berries, jelly, or apple-butter (with the two last raisins may be added), can be used.--Mrs. T. B. J.
A steamed or boiled suet-less roll of biscuit dough wrapped around fruit. The method is sound; the vocabulary and the timings need translation.
- Soda-biscuit doughA plain baking-powder or soda-and-sour-milk biscuit dough, made "rich" with a generous hand of butter or lard; the recipe gives no quantities. Keep it stiff enough to roll without tearing; a wet dough will not hold the fruit during the long steam.
- Raised-biscuit doughYeast-leavened dough, the alternative given. Roll it thinner as instructed, because it will expand considerably in the steam and a thick yeast crust turns doughy in the middle.
- Sour applesFirm tart cooking apples — Granny Smith, Bramley, Northern Spy. They hold shape and supply the acid that sweet dessert apples lack. Note that the recipe adds no sugar to the fruit; the sweetness comes from the cream or butter-and-sugar at table, so sweeten the filling if you want a conventional dessert.
- Steaming versus boilingSteaming over boiling water for 1 hour 45 minutes is the more forgiving of the two methods and needs a pot deep enough to keep the water off the roll. Top the kettle up with boiling water so it never runs dry.
- The pudding cloth"Baste up sides" means to sew or tack the cloth closed along its length. Use unbleached cotton or a floured linen tea towel, and leave a little slack for expansion. The dough must be sealed well enough that water does not get in, which is what the tucked ends and the sewn seam are for.
- Pricking with a forkMost likely to let steam escape from inside the roll so the crust does not burst; the recipe does not say. Do it deeply, as written.
- TimingAn hour and a half to an hour and three-quarters is genuinely required for a dense steamed roll of this size; the interior comes up to temperature slowly. Test with a skewer through the centre — it should meet cooked, not gummy, dough.
- Yield and servingCut in thick rounds across the log. Serve hot; steamed biscuit dough goes heavy as it cools.
- Other fillingsJelly and apple-butter make a much wetter roll than sliced apple, so use them sparingly and seal the ends firmly. Dried fruit should be plumped in hot water first or it will draw moisture from the crust.
Roly-poly puddings belong to the British boiled-pudding tradition that came to American kitchens intact: a sheet of dough spread with fruit or jam, rolled, wrapped in a floured cloth and boiled in the same kettle already on the stove. What distinguishes this American version is the crust — English roly-poly used suet pastry, while Buckeye Cookery (the title Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping is associated with the 1877 Minneapolis edition, though the work descends from an earlier Marysville, Ohio compilation) substitutes the biscuit dough that any Midwestern cook already made daily, leavened with soda or yeast. The boiled pudding was practical rather than quaint: it needed no oven, which mattered on a wood range in summer, and it turned a small quantity of fruit into a filling dish. The attribution to "Mrs. T. B. J." is typical of the book, which was assembled from contributions; the church-benefit story attaches to that earlier Marysville, Ohio fundraising edition.