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Roley Poley Pudding
Roll pastry or a baking-powder biscuit dough very thin, about one eighth of an inch in thickness, spread with jam, blackberry, black currant, or raspberry. Roll like a jelly roll, press, and close the ends as tight as possible. Tie in a floured cloth, and cook in boiling water two hours, or steam in steamer one hour. Remove from cloth and serve on hot platter with Foamy Sauce. 2 cups milk scalded
A boiled suet-era pudding translated into a jam roll, and the only tricky part is keeping the water out of it. Everything hinges on the wrapping.
- Seal before you tiePress the long seam and both ends firmly shut, then set the roll seam-side down in the cloth. A leak lets water in and jam out, and you get grey paste at one end.
- The pudding clothUse a square of unbleached cotton or a well-washed tea towel, dip it in boiling water, wring it out, then flour the damp side generously. The flour sets into a skin that keeps water from soaking the dough. Tie loosely enough to allow about an inch of swelling, and pleat the cloth along the top.
- Boiling vs. steamingBoiling for two hours means fully submerged, water at a steady roll, topped up with more boiling water as it drops. The one-hour steamer version is easier to manage; the recipe offers it as an equal alternative.
- Baking-powder dough proportionsThe recipe assumes you already have a biscuit dough; a standard one of the period runs roughly 2 cups flour, 4 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 4 tablespoons fat and about 3/4 cup milk. Roll it to the specified one-eighth inch.
- Jam, and how muchUse a thick, well-set preserve, about 3/4 cup, and leave a half-inch border all round. Loose jam or jelly liquefies in the heat and runs straight out of the seam. Blackberry and black currant, both named in the recipe, set firmly and hold their shape well.
- Foamy SauceSauces of this name in books of the period are butter and sugar creamed together, beaten with an egg and flavoring, then whisked hot over water until frothy; check the book's own version. It is served warm and should not be allowed to boil, or it separates.
- The stray line"2 cups milk scalded" appears to be a fragment of an adjacent recipe in the original printing. It has no part in the pudding; ignore it.
- YieldOne roll will serve about six, cut into thick diagonal slices. Turn it out and cut it hot, as it firms considerably on cooling.
Roly-poly is one of the plainest members of the English boiled-pudding family, which flourished because a cloth and a pot of water were more reliably available in a nineteenth-century kitchen than a dependable oven. Older versions used a suet crust and were often filled with jam, treacle or dried fruit, and the school-dinner nickname "dead man's arm" or "dead man's leg" is often explained by the story that they were steamed in an old shirtsleeve, though that explanation is folklore rather than documented fact. This American book offers pastry or baking-powder biscuit dough instead of suet, and gives steaming as an alternative to the older two-hour boil. Lowney's was a Boston chocolate firm whose cook book served to promote its products, so a plain jam pudding here is not a house specialty.