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Apple Roly-Poly
Shred very finely six ounces of beef suet, and mix with one pound of flour. Make into a paste with half a pint of water. Roll it out about the third of an inch thick, and eight or ten inches wide. Spread over, rather thickly, three pounds of apples boiled to a pulp and sweetened and flavoured. Leave half an inch of the edges untouched with fruit. Roll round, fasten the ends securely, tie the pudding in a floured cloth, and boil. Serve with sweet sauce. Time to boil, one hour and a half. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A suet roly-poly is a steamed dough wrapped around cooked fruit; the only tricky parts are the fat and the cloth.
- SuetSix ounces of shredded beef suet to one pound of flour is a moderately rich crust; richer versions go up to eight ounces to the pound. Packet shredded suet (beef or vegetarian) works directly; a block of raw kidney suet needs freezing and grating, and any membrane picked out.
- MeasuresHalf a pint of water in this book is 10 fl oz (British Imperial), not 8. Add it gradually — flour absorbency varies, and you want a soft but not sticky paste. Three pounds of apples cooks down to a generous quantity of thick pulp; use as much as the sheet of paste will take.
- The filling must be cold and thickWarm or watery apple pulp soaks the dough and the roll bursts in the water. Cook the apples down until a spoon drawn through leaves a clear channel, then chill before spreading.
- SealingThe half-inch clear border is not decoration. Dampen it, press the seam firmly, and pinch or fold the ends closed before wrapping; a leaking roll dilutes into the pot.
- The clothUse unbleached calico or a clean tea towel, scalded, floured on the inside, and tied loosely enough for the pudding to swell by about a third. Tie the ends like a cracker. Modern alternative: baking parchment then foil, pleated, in a steamer.
- BoilingThe water must be at a full boil before the pudding goes in and must not drop below a simmer, or the suet sits heavy. Keep the roll off the pan floor on a saucer or trivet and top up with boiling water. Ninety minutes is right for this size.
- Sweet sauceProbably a pouring custard or a sugar-and-butter sauce; a thin crème anglaise or plain cream both suit it. Serves five or six, best eaten the day it is made.
Roly-poly belongs to the family of boiled suet puddings that dominated British domestic cooking once the pudding cloth came into use in the seventeenth century — a cloth let a cook boil a sweet pudding alongside the meat in a single pot, which mattered in a kitchen with one fire. The jam version is better remembered, but fruit rolls like this one were the thriftier form, using cheap or windfall apples cooked to a pulp rather than bought preserves. The name is generally taken as nursery reduplication describing the rolling up of the paste; "roly-poly pudding" is recorded in print in the nineteenth century. The costing of one shilling, enough for five or six, shows why such puddings survived: suet was cheap, flour was cheap, and the bulk did the work that meat could not afford to.