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Boiled Sweetmeat Pudding
Twelve ounces flour and eight ounces butter rolled in a square sheet of paste. Spread over the whole sweetmeats (or stewed fruit, if more convenient). Roll closely and boil in a cloth. Pour sauce over it.--Mrs.T. BOILED BREAD PUDDING. Pour one quart milk over a loaf of grated stale bread. Let it stand till near dinner time. Then beat six eggs very light and add them to the bread and milk, together with a little flour, to make the whole stick. Flour the bag and boil. Eat with sauce.--Mrs. J.A.B.
Boiled Bread Pudding. (Economical.) Soak one pound stale bread in enough milk to make a pudding. When soft, beat it up with two eggs and three tablespoonfuls flour. Pour in a large lump of butter, melted. Put in any sort of fruit you like, and then boil.--Miss E.T.
Three boiled puddings run together in one entry: a jam roly-poly and two versions of a boiled bread pudding. None of them gives a time, a temperature, or a yield, so the working details below matter more than usual.
- The hinge: a tight cloth and constant boilingThe cloth or bag must be floured (or greased and floured) so the paste seals against it rather than absorbing water, and tied loosely enough to let the pudding swell. The water has to stay at a full boil the whole time and cover the pudding; if it drops off the boil the paste turns sodden.
- "Sweetmeats"In this book sweetmeats are preserved fruit — jam, thick fruit preserves, candied or brandied fruit — not confectionery. The parenthetical "stewed fruit" tells you the intent: a thick, jammy filling that will not run out of the roll.
- Weights for the pasteTwelve ounces flour is about 2 3/4 cups; eight ounces butter is two sticks. That is a very rich short crust for a boiled pudding, where suet was the usual fat; expect a tender, slightly crumbly roll rather than a springy suet one. Add cold water a spoonful at a time until it just coheres.
- Timing, since none is givenA roly-poly of this size wants about 1 1/2 to 2 hours at a steady boil; the bread puddings, 1 to 1 1/2 hours. A boiled pudding is done when a skewer comes out clean and hot.
- A loaf of stale breadLoaf sizes varied a good deal in the nineteenth century, so 'a loaf' is an imprecise measure; Miss E.T.'s pound of stale bread is a reasonable working guide for the first recipe as well. Use about 1 lb of stale white bread, crusts included, torn or grated -- modern sandwich loaves are softer and will need less milk than a quart.
- Pudding cloth vs. basinIf you have no pudding cloth or bag, both puddings work in a buttered pudding basin covered with pleated parchment and foil and tied down, set on a trivet in a covered pot of simmering water. The texture is a little denser and the shape better behaved.
- "Sauce"Assumed knowledge in this book: a sweet wine or brandy sauce, or hard sauce (butter creamed with sugar and spirit), served over the hot pudding. Something with acidity or alcohol is wanted, as all three puddings are rich and mild.
- YieldNo yield is stated. On the quantities given, the roly-poly should serve about six to eight, and each bread pudding, built on roughly a pound of bread, about eight.
Boiled puddings tied in a floured cloth were the backbone of English domestic cookery from the seventeenth century onward, and they crossed into Virginia kitchens intact — a pudding could be dropped into the pot that was already boiling for dinner, needing no oven and no dish. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives identified by their initials, prints all three of these one after another: pastry rolled round preserves, and stale bread rescued with milk and eggs. The second bread pudding is explicitly labeled "economical," cutting the eggs from six to two and leaning on flour instead, which is the sort of frank downward adjustment that recurs throughout this book — published fourteen years after the Civil War, into Virginia households whose means had changed sharply. Roly-poly puddings of this kind are generally traced to English regional cookery and were known by a scatter of nursery names before the term settled.