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Prune Roly-Poly Pudding
Wash and stone a pound of prunes. Blanch the kernels, and put them into a stewpan with the fruit, a table-spoonful of moist sugar, half a pint of water, and a glassful of port. Boil the prunes to a thick paste. Roll out a piece of pastry, such as is used for boiled pudding, a third of an inch thick. Spread the fruit upon it, moisten the edges, and make it into a roll. Fasten the ends securely. Tie the pudding in a floured cloth, plunge it into boiling water, and boil it quickly till done enough. Send wine sauce to table with it. Time to boil, about two hours and a half. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
The pudding itself is a plain boiled suet roll, but the filling as written includes the prune kernels, and that is the part that cannot be carried over.
- The kernels are the problemPrune stones are plum stones, and the kernel inside contains amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is chewed, crushed or stewed in liquid. Blanching loosens the skin but does not destroy the compound.
- The quantity is not trivialA pound of prunes means several dozen stones, and every kernel is cooked down into a paste divided among five or six people. Stone-fruit kernels carry the same class of hazard as bitter almonds, whose retail sale is restricted in a number of countries today.
- Boiling does not make it safeProlonged cooking drives off some hydrogen cyanide and destroys the plant enzyme, but the amygdalin itself remains in the filling and can still be broken down after eating. There is no reliable domestic method for detoxifying stone-fruit kernels, and no way to measure what is left.
- Why the kernels are there at allThey were used for their almond-like flavour, not for substance. Nineteenth-century cooks treated plum, peach and apricot kernels as a cheap substitute for bitter almonds in fruit dishes and creams.
- If you want the puddingUse a current recipe for a boiled or steamed suet roly-poly with a plain prune filling. Do not adapt this one.
- Reading the measuresFor reference only: half a pint is 10 fl oz in imperial measure, a "glassful" of port is conventionally reckoned at a wine glass of roughly 2 fl oz, and moist sugar is soft, damp brown sugar.
Roly-poly puddings — a sheet of suet pastry spread with jam or stewed fruit, rolled, tied in a floured cloth and boiled — were a fixture of British kitchens through the nineteenth century, cheap and filling. Prunes were among the most useful of the dried fruits available year-round to an ordinary household. The instruction to blanch and cook the kernels is not a peculiarity of this recipe: cookery writers of the period regularly called for plum, apricot and peach kernels to supply a bitter-almond note, at a time when the chemistry of stone-fruit seeds was known to chemists but seldom raised in domestic cookery books. The wine sauce and glass of port suggest a dinner pudding rather than a nursery one.