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Orange Roly Poly
Peel, slice and seed 4 sweet oranges. Mix well together 1 pint of flour, 1/4 of a teaspoonful of salt, 1 tablespoonful of sugar and 1 teaspoonful of baking-powder. Rub into this 2 tablespoonfuls of butter and mix in sufficient sweet milk to mix to a soft dough. Turn out on a wellfloured board, roll out in a long strip, spread with the sliced oranges and sprinkle thickly with sugar. Roll up, pinch the ends so that the juice will not run out, lay on a buttered plate and R steam for forty minutes, then place in the oven until the top is dried off. Serve with hard or soft sauce.
A steamed suet-free roly poly built on a plain baking-powder dough, closer to a biscuit dough than a pastry. The hinge is sealing the roll: if the ends open, the orange juice runs out and the dough boils rather than steams.
- A pint of flourFlour was measured by volume in this period, so a pint means 2 cups, roughly 8 to 9 oz. Use all-purpose.
- LeaveningOne teaspoon of baking powder for 2 cups of flour is light by current standards; modern practice is closer to 2 teaspoons for a dough of this size. As written the roll will be dense and dumpling-like.
- Milk quantityNo amount is given because it depends on the flour. Expect about 2/3 to 3/4 cup of whole milk for a soft, slightly sticky dough that still handles.
- The orangesFour sweet oranges peeled and sliced will shed a good deal of juice. Slice them over a bowl, drain the slices before spreading, and pith them well; the recipe's instruction to seed them points to a seedier fruit than a modern navel, and eating oranges of the period were generally smaller, so three navels may be enough.
- Sealing the rollRoll up from the long side, pinch the seam and both ends firmly, and set the roll seam-side down. Some cooks wrapped the roll loosely in a floured cloth to hold its shape through the steaming.
- Steaming setupThe buttered plate goes on a rack or trivet inside a covered pot over an inch or two of simmering water, not in the water. Keep the water at a bare simmer and top it up as it boils away over the forty minutes.
- Drying off in the ovenThe recipe gives no oven heat; a moderate oven of around 350F for 10 to 15 minutes should be enough to take the steam-damp gloss off the surface. Much hotter and the sugary juice at the seam may scorch.
- The saucesHard sauce is creamed butter and powdered sugar, flavored here with orange zest or a spoonful of the reserved juice. Soft sauce means a thin pouring custard or a sweetened butter sauce loosened with hot water.
- YieldProbably serves about six, cut into thick diagonal slices and sauced at the table.
Roly poly belongs to the British family of rolled steamed puddings that came to American cookbooks through the nineteenth century, usually made with jam and a suet crust and boiled in a floured cloth. The version here shows two American substitutions at work: suet has been replaced by a couple of tablespoons of butter in a chemically leavened dough, which is faster and cheaper than a suet paste, and the jam filling has been swapped for fresh fruit. Oranges reached inland American markets in quantity once refrigerated rail cars and Florida and California groves made them a winter staple rather than a Christmas-stocking luxury. Steaming rather than baking also suited a household cooking on a range where oven heat was harder to hold steady than a pot of simmering water.