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Apple Roley Poley
Peel, quarter and core sour apples, make rich soda-biscuit dough, (or raised-biscuit dough may be used if rolled thinner), roll to half an inch thick, slice the quarters, and lay on the prepared paste or crust, roll up, tuck ends in, prick deeply with a fork, lay in a steamer and place over a kettle of boiling water, cook an hour and three-quarters. Or, wrap in a cloth, tie up the ends and baste up sides, put in kettle of boiling water, and boil an hour and a half or more, keeping the water boiling constantly. Cut across, and eat with sweetened cream or butter and sugar. Cherries, dried fruit, any kind of berries, jelly, or apple-butter (with the two last raisins may be added), can be used. -Mrs. T. B. J.
A boiled or steamed rolled pudding of the English school, translated into American biscuit dough. The instructions assume you already know how to make soda biscuit and how to manage a pudding cloth.
- Rich soda-biscuit doughThis is a baking-soda biscuit dough enriched with extra butter or lard and mixed with sour milk or buttermilk, which supplies the acid the soda needs. "Raised" dough means a yeast-leavened biscuit dough; roll it thinner, as directed, because it will expand in the steam.
- Sour applesFirm tart cooking apples: Bramley, Rhode Island Greening, Northern Spy, or Granny Smith. Softer dessert apples are more likely to cook down towards sauce and wet the crust.
- The filling is unsweetenedNo sugar is specified because the sweetness comes from the cream or the butter-and-sugar at table. If you want a sweeter pudding, scatter 1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar and a little cinnamon over the sliced apples before rolling.
- Sealing the rollTuck the ends in and pinch the long seam closed, then lay the roll seam down. The fork pricking vents steam from inside the roll so it does not burst; it is not there to let water in.
- The pudding clothIf you boil rather than steam, wring a cotton cloth in boiling water and dust it well with flour before wrapping. "Baste up the sides" means loose running stitches along the seam. Tie the ends with string, leaving slack for expansion, and keep the water at a full boil the whole time or the dough turns leaden.
- TimingAn hour and three-quarters is a long steam for a half-inch crust, and a smaller roll may be done sooner. Test by inserting a skewer through a vent hole, which should meet soft apple and cooked-through crust.
- Steamer setupAny covered pot with a rack above an inch or two of boiling water works. Grease the rack or line it with parchment, keep the lid on, and top up with boiling water so the pot never runs dry.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; one roll will serve several. Cut it in thick slices across, as directed, and serve hot with sweetened cream, or with butter and sugar mashed together as a hard sauce.
- Other fillingsBerries and cherries release far more juice than apples; drain them and toss with a spoonful of flour, or the crust will be waterlogged. Jelly and apple butter need no extra help.
Roly-poly is an English pudding of the nineteenth century, a rolled suet crust boiled in a cloth, and the name is generally traced to nothing more than the shape and the rolling. Here the suet crust is replaced by the biscuit dough already in the American kitchen, which is why the recipe opens with soda-biscuit rather than chopped beef fat. The Dixie Cook Book, first published in the 1880s, was one of the compiled cookbooks that gathered contributions under initials -- "Mrs. T. B. J." -- and this is one of a number of puddings from a period when a good many puddings were boiled or steamed rather than baked. A wood or coal range would generally hold a steady boil more easily than a steady oven, and a pudding tied in a cloth needed neither a tin nor a closely watched fire.