Home › Puddings And Sauces › Orange Roley Poley
Orange Roley Poley
Make a light pastry as for apple dumplings, roll in oblong sheets and lay oranges peeled, sliced, and seeded, thickly all over it; sprinkle with white sugar; scatter over all a tea-spoon or two of grated orange-peel, and roll up, folding down the edges closely to keep the syrup from running out; boil in a cloth one and one-half hours. Eat with lemon-sauce prepared as follows: Six eggs, leaving out the whites of two, half pound butter, one pound sugar, juice of two lemons and rind of both grated; place over a slow fire, stir till it thickens like honey. Very nice. - Mrs. A. E. Walsh, Nashville, Tenn.
A boiled roll pudding of the old English kind, given a Southern citrus filling. Two things decide whether it works: how tightly the roll is sealed, and how gently the lemon sauce is cooked.
- "Pastry as for apple dumplings"Most likely a plain rolled crust rather than flaky puff, sturdy enough to survive an hour and a half in water; the book leaves the reader to supply the proportions. A workable reconstruction: 3 cups flour, 1 cup shredded suet or cold butter, a teaspoon of salt, a tablespoon of baking powder and enough cold water or milk to bring it together (about 1 cup), rolled out to the right oblong.
- The pudding clothUse a square of unbleached muslin or a large linen tea towel, scalded, wrung out, then floured heavily on the inside face so the dough does not stick. Roll the pudding in it loosely enough to allow swelling, tie both ends and the seam, and keep the water at a steady simmer, topping up with boiling water so it never drops below the pudding.
- Sealing is the hingeOrange slices give off a great deal of juice. Leave a clear inch of dough at each edge, moisten it, and pinch and fold the ends shut before rolling; if the seam opens the syrup leaks into the water and the crust boils to paste.
- Steaming insteadA pudding basin covered with buttered parchment and foil, steamed the same hour and a half, is easier to manage than a cloth and gives the same result. Cut into thick rounds to serve.
- The orangesThe instruction to seed them suggests seedy varieties, as most oranges then were; modern navels or Cara Caras need no seeding. Peel, remove as much white pith as patience allows, and slice crosswise about a quarter inch thick. Very juicy varieties benefit from a tablespoon of flour tossed with the sugar to thicken the syrup inside.
- "Grated orange-peel"This is zest. Take it from an unwaxed orange with a rasp, avoiding the bitter white layer.
- The lemon sauce is a curdSix eggs less two whites, 8 oz butter, 1 lb sugar and the juice and zest of two lemons make a large quantity — about a quart. Halving it is reasonable for one pudding. Cook it in a bowl over simmering water, not directly on the burner, stirring constantly until it coats the spoon and reaches roughly 170F; if it approaches a boil the eggs scramble.
- Finishing the sauceStrain it through a sieve while hot to catch any set egg and the grated rind, which has by then given up its oil. It keeps a week refrigerated and thickens considerably as it cools, so pull it while it still runs "like honey" as written.
- YieldOne roll of this size serves six to eight, cut in generous slices, with the sauce poured over warm.
The roly-poly is an English boiled pudding of the nineteenth century — a sheet of suet paste spread with jam or fruit, rolled, and boiled in a floured cloth — and it travelled into American cookbooks wherever the suet-pudding tradition did. What marks this version as Southern is the filling: fresh oranges, sliced and sugared, at a time when citrus was a seasonal luxury rather than a year-round staple. The Dixie Cook Book was assembled from contributions by named housekeepers, and the attribution to Mrs. A. E. Walsh with her closing verdict, "Very nice," is typical of the form; these books read as a record of what women were willing to put their names to. The lemon sauce is what would now be sold as lemon curd, and its proportions — a pound of sugar, half a pound of butter, six eggs — belong to a period when a pudding sauce was expected to be as rich as the pudding.