Set a sponge over night with 1 cake of compressed yeast dissolved in a cup of warm water, 3 cups of milk and flour enough to make a thick batter. Then add ½ cup of melted butter, 1 cup of sugar, a salt-spoonful of salt, ½ teaspoonful of soda, ½ nutmeg grated and flour enough to make a stiff dough. Let raise five hours; then roll out half an inch thick and cut into round cakes. Lay in a well-buttered baking-pan. Let stand half an hour; then bake until a light brown. Brush the top with white of egg beaten with pulverized sugar.
A straightforward overnight sponge dough, sweetened and spiced, closer to a soft sweet roll than anything a modern reader would call a bun. The one thing to watch is the rising: five hours is written for a cool 1900s kitchen, and a warm modern room will get there far sooner.
- The five-hour riseJudge the dough, not the clock. In a 70F kitchen this enriched dough will be doubled and slack in about two hours; left five it may collapse and turn sour. Punch down and shape when it has roughly doubled, or retard it in the refrigerator if you want the long timing.
- One cake of compressed yeastCompressed (fresh) yeast cakes of this period varied in size, commonly around 0.6 oz but sometimes larger. Substitute roughly 2 to 2¼ teaspoons of instant or active dry yeast, about one standard 7 g packet.
- Setting the spongeDissolve the yeast in the warm water, add the milk (scalded and cooled, or simply warm), and beat in flour to a thick pancake-batter consistency; with four cups of liquid that will take several cups of flour. Cover and leave overnight at room temperature; it should be bubbly and smell yeasty by morning.
- Salt-spoonfulA salt-spoon was the smallest spoon on a Victorian table, about a quarter teaspoon. For this quantity of flour that is very little salt; a full teaspoon is more to modern taste.
- The half teaspoon of sodaNot a leavener here so much as an acid corrector. An overnight sponge goes slightly sour, and the soda neutralises that tang. Dissolve it in a spoonful of water before adding so it does not streak the dough.
- Flour enough for a stiff doughWith a cup of water and three cups of milk this is a large batch, and the total flour will run well beyond six cups. Add the last of it gradually; the dough should be firm enough to roll but still slightly tacky, not dry.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no oven setting, only "bake until a light brown"; a moderate oven, around 375F, suits it, and about 15 to 20 minutes at this thickness. Higher heat browns the sugared tops before the centres set.
- The egg glazeThe recipe puts the brushing after baking, so brush while the buns are still hot and the beaten white and powdered sugar sets to a thin gloss. Use about one white to 2 tablespoons of confectioners' sugar.
- YieldRolled half an inch thick and cut with a 2½-inch cutter, this makes roughly two dozen buns. Set them close in the pan so they rise into each other and stay soft-sided.
Nineteenth-century American cookbooks appear to have used "English buns" loosely, for any lightly sweetened, spiced yeast roll of the sort sold at English bakers' shops, distinct from the crossed hot cross bun of Good Friday. The nutmeg is the period marker: grated fresh from the whole nut, it was the default sweet spice in Anglo-American baking well into the twentieth century, and recipes of the period seem often to call for half a nutmeg as casually as they call for a cup of sugar. The overnight sponge is the older method, from an era when a baker built dough in two stages to get the most flavour out of unreliable yeast. Books like this one, arranged as a dish for every day of the year and labelled by nation, were a popular late-Victorian and Edwardian format, offering the home cook a tour of the world without straying far from her own pantry.