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Dessert

Roly-poly

A steamed fruit pudding made with a biscuit crust, suet, molasses, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roly-poly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the crust and wrap

  1. Make a biscuit crust with 1 quart of flour and roll it out to ½ inch thick.

  2. Spread the crust with your choice of fruit and fold it to prevent the fruit from leaking.

  3. Dip a cloth in boiling water, flour it, and wrap it around the pudding, leaving room for it to swell.

Steam the pudding

  1. Steam the pudding for 1 to 1.5 hours.

Make the steamed pudding

  1. For the steamed pudding, mix 1 cup suet, ½ cup molasses, ½ cup sugar, 2 eggs, 1 cup sweet milk, 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 2 teaspoons cream of tartar dissolved in the milk.

  2. Butter a dish or bowl and sprinkle raisins on the bottom, then steam for 2 hours.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the crust and the batter as it sets during steaming.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set its structure while steaming.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep color to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas that makes the pudding rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides the acid that reacts with baking soda, producing gas for lift.

The step that matters

Wrap the pudding in the floured cloth with room to swell. The leavening gases expand as the pudding steams. If the cloth is wrapped too tightly, the pudding cannot expand, and it may become dense or split. Leaving room lets the dough rise evenly while the flour on the cloth keeps it from sticking.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, molasses, sugar, egg, milk, cream):

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Strawberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, molasses, sugar, egg, milk, cream. 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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