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Fig Roly Poly
Pick over and wash 1 pound of figs, cut into bits and place in a double boiler with 1 cupful of water. Cover and cook slowly until they can be beaten to a pulp with a spoon. Cool and flavor with a few drops of vanilla. Sift together 1 pint of flour, 1/2 teaspoonful of salt and i heaping teaspoonful of baking-powder, then rub into it 2 heaping tablespoonfuls of butter. Mix to a soft dough with cold milk, turn out on a floured board and roll out in a sheet half an inch thick.
Spread with the fig paste and roll up tightly, pinching the ends well together. Place on a buttered pan, steam for three-quarters of an hour and stand in a hot oven for five minutes to dry off. Serve with milk or vanilla sauce.
A steamed suet-less pudding roll built on a baking-powder biscuit dough, sweetened entirely by the fruit. The main thing to get right is the steaming setup, since the original assumes a lidded steamer you may not have.
- Figs mean dried figsOne pound of dried figs, stems trimmed off before chopping — the stem ends stay woody no matter how long they cook. "Pick over" is a reminder to check for grit and stray stems, still worth doing.
- The double boilerFigs and a cup of water over indirect heat may take the better part of an hour to break down; the recipe simply says to cook until they can be beaten to a pulp. A heavy saucepan on low heat works and is faster, but it needs stirring; the advantage of the double boiler is that the fruit is less likely to scorch while unattended.
- A pint of flourFlour was measured by volume in this period: a pint is 2 cups, roughly 8 to 9 oz. The dough should be soft enough to roll but not sticky, so add the cold milk gradually — about 3/4 cup is typical.
- Heaping tablespoonfulsTwo heaping tablespoons of butter is roughly 1 1/2 to 2 oz. Rub it in cold, as for biscuits, and stop while the mixture is still coarse.
- Cool the filling firstWarm fig paste will melt the butter in the dough and soak it before it sets. Cool the pulp fully, and spread it thin, leaving a clear inch at each end so the seams pinch shut.
- Steaming without a steamerSet the buttered pan on a rack in a large covered pot or roasting pan with an inch of simmering water beneath it, and top the water up as it goes. Three-quarters of an hour at a steady simmer; the roll will look pale and feel firm and springy.
- "A hot oven"425 to 450F. Five minutes is only to dry the surface and take off the damp steamed sheen — it is not additional cooking.
- Yield and sauceNo yield is given; cut in thick slices it will probably serve about six. 'Milk or vanilla sauce' may mean plain milk poured over or a milk-based sauce; a thin vanilla custard or a sugar-and-vanilla cornstarch sauce is the richer option.
Roly poly puddings are an English boiled-pudding tradition, usually made with suet crust and jam and boiled in a floured cloth; 'roly-poly' as a word is older than the pudding, and its application to this dish is recorded from the nineteenth century. This version shows the dish adapted in American cookery: the suet is replaced by a little butter in a baking-powder dough, the cloth by a buttered pan in a steamer, and the jam by figs cooked down to a paste, which supplies all the sweetness without a spoonful of sugar. Dried figs travelled and kept well and were a cheap sweet ingredient, which may be why they stand in for jam here.