Jam Roly-Poly

One of those creations that has us all harking back to school dinners or family Sundays, jam roly-poly seems to be an early 19th-century invention. The phrase itself probably derives from nursery rhymes to denote a plump little figure, usually a child. As a pudding, it is mentioned by the novelist Thackeray, and appears in Isabella Beeton’s great cookery book of 1861, as Roly-Poly Jam Pudding. All you need, advises Mrs Beeton, is three-quarters of a pound each of suet pastry and jam, and good rolling technique.

The suet is what gives the pastry that pallid look and stodgy texture. For the true roly-poly experience, the pudding is served directly from the oven, while the jam is still almost radioactively hot, and draped with a blanket of custard. It’s warming winter food, not at all the sort of thing you’d want to eat in high summer, as it sinks on to the stomach like a comforting lead weight. According to the narrator of E Nesbit’s The Woodbegoods (1901), “Jam roly gives you a peaceful feeling and you do not at first care if you never play any runabout game ever any more.” Quite so.