IT has to be one of the most terrifying moments in children's literature, a scene more suited to the extremes of Grand - Guignol than the cosy warmth of a bed-time story. When naughty Tom Kitten, in Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, gets lost up the chimney, he falls into a small, 'stuffy, fusty' room, where he's bound up with string, to be turned into a 'kitten dumpling roly-poly pudding' by Mr and Mrs Samuel Whiskers, two vast rats. The greedy rodents argue as to the best recipe (Mr W insists breadcrumbs are essential), before stealing the ingredients from the kitchen, together with a rolling pin, smearing the terrified kitten in butter, then encasing him in dough.
The accompanying illustration, of a terrified Tom-just his head and tail peeping out as the rats get to work-haunted my childhood. His bacon is saved by John Joiner the terrier and the pudding doesn't go to waste either it's boiled in a cloth, 'with currants in it to hide the smuts-but never has a much-loved dish seemed quite as sinister. And it put me off roly-poly for life. Which is a shame, because roly-poly is one of the stars of the British pudding constellation, itself a rare culinary art for which we are renowned the world over. 'Blessed be he that invented pudding, cried M. Misson, a jovial Frenchman, towards the end of the 17th century, 'for it is a manna that hits the palates of all sorts of people; a manna, better than that of the wilderness, because the people are never weary of it!' The food writer and polemicist P. Morton Shand was equally enamoured. 'As a nation we are rightly proud of our puddings,' he thundered, and are inclined to sneer at the French for the dearth of their achievements and the poverty of their invention in this sphere. For once, perhaps, our exultation and self-satisfaction are justified.'
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