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Apple and Currant Roly Poly

A rolled suet pastry filled with cooked apple pulp and currants, boiled and served with sweetened melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,918 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Apple and Currant Roly Poly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Slice the apples and place them in a pan with 1 tablespoon of water.

  2. Cook until the apples can be beaten to a pulp.

  3. Add sugar to sweeten the apple pulp and let it cool.

Roll and wrap

  1. Roll out the suet pastry thinly and spread the cooled apple pulp over it.

  2. Sprinkle the apple pulp with currants and nutmeg, wet the edges, and roll it up tightly.

  3. Wrap the rolled pastry in greased paper, secure it with a cloth, and plunge it into boiling water.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook for 1 to 2 hours.

  2. Remove the cloth and paper before serving with sweetened melted butter.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Nutmeg + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Currant + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Suet pastry
Forms the rolled outer casing that holds the filling and becomes tender when steamed.
Apples
Cooked to a pulp, they provide the moist, sweet-tart body of the filling.
Currants
Add small pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Rolling the pastry tightly and sealing the edges. Loose rolling or unsealed edges let the filling escape or water seep in during the long boil, so the roll can turn soggy and fall apart. Wrapping it snugly in greased paper and a cloth also helps it hold its shape while it cooks.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nutmeg, apple, sugar, butter):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, apple, sugar, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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