2. The 'Roly-Poly Pudding'

One of the Stories that Beatrix Potter wrote and illustrated is The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or, the Roly-Poly Pudding (1908) This story Is about a naughty kitten called Tom kitten who gets in trouble with the rats into his house and gets made into a roly-poly pudding This intrigued me because of the ingredients that were used within the text:

(1) Beatrix Potter Illustration

(2) Potter 73 quote

(figure 2)This use of ingredients made me want to research the proper way to make a roly-poly pudding. Throughout my research, I came across a recipe by Eliza Acton in her cookbook Modern Cookery for Private Families. It details a recipe for a suet pudding 'half a pound of fine stale bread-crumbs, three-quarters of a pound of flour, from ten to twelve ounces of beef-suet chopped extremely small, a large half-teaspoon of salt, and rather less of pepper, with two eggs and a little milk.' (Acton 408)

(3) Eliza Acton recipe

This is the first version I could find of a roly-poly pudding, within this recipe Acton also has a variation only for fruit. It also follows the same principle of making the mixture, rolling it up and boiling it in water to cook the pudding as modern day recipes follow. The relation to Beatrix Potter and the quote I just used from her work, is, in my opinion, a nod towards the different recipes that you can use. Acton says that you can use 'a paste as for a beef-steak pudding, either with suet or butter'(408) by getting Samuel Whiskers to argue about this within Potters text it shows her knowledge of a roly-poly pudding recipe and how to make it. The characters go with butter and dough in the end which in relation to the text is the most simple. Potter using this also shows the inclusion real food and ingredients into her work

(4) Mrs Beeton Recipe

Mrs Beeton's book of household management also has a very similar version to Eliza Acton of a roly-poly pudding. This is because she used the recipe from Acton's book in her own. This time it is a variation called a rolled treacle pudding which is made with suet or lard. But it still holds the idea of a rolled boiled pudding. Beeton's version is portrayed as a favourite with the children and also can be used for a plain family dinner.  

With this in mind, I want to try and create a version of my own roly-poly pudding which will follow the same principle of suet, flour, salt, sugar etc.

Works Cited

Acton, Eliza. Modern Cookery for Private Families. London: Elek, 1860. Google Archives. Harvard University. Web. 22 Feb. 2017. <https://archive.org/details/moderncookeryfo00actogoog>.

Potter, Beatrix. The Beatrix Potter Collection. Vol. Two. Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 2014. Print.

Images Cited 
(1) Potter, Beatrix. "Kitten roly-poly pudding" Digital image Chessalee WordPress blog 2008. 22 Feb 2017
https://chessaleeinlondon.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/beatrix-potters-hill-top-farm/
(2) Foord, Korie. "Potter 73 quote" 2017 JPEG image
(3) Foord, Korie. "Eliza Acton" 2017 JPEG image
(4) Foord, Korie. "Mrs Beeton" 2017 JPEG image