Cream Scones
2 cupfuls flour 4 tablespoonfuls Crisco 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder 2 teaspoonfuls sugar 1/2 teaspoonful salt 2 eggs 1/3 cupful cream 1 white of egg Mix and sift flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder. Rub in Crisco with finger tips, add eggs well beaten and cream. Knead dough lightly on floured baking board, divide into four equal pieces, make smooth and roll out, and cut into 4 small scones. Lay them on hot griddle, brush over with beaten white of egg and fry slowly on both sides. The dough should always be lightly handled. Sufficient for sixteen scones.
A griddle scone rather than a baked one, from a cookbook published to promote Crisco. The dough is rich and soft, and the whole thing turns on heat control.
- The hinge: low, steady heat"Fry slowly" is the instruction that matters. A griddle hot enough to colour the outside quickly risks leaving the centre raw and gummy. The recipe specifies neither thickness, temperature nor timing: keep the heat medium-low and cook until a skewer comes out clean.
- CriscoStill sold, though reformulated more than once since this book was written; the original was the newly introduced hydrogenated cottonseed shortening. Any solid vegetable shortening works, and 4 tablespoons of cold butter gives a better flavour with no change in method. Keep the fat cold and rub it in quickly.
- CreamA third of a cup, and "cream" in this period generally means something around 18-20 percent butterfat — modern light cream or half-and-half. Heavy cream will work but makes a stiffer dough; add a spoonful of milk if it will not come together.
- The dough is wetter than you expectThe dough is softer than you expect -- two whole eggs plus cream into two cups of flour gives a soft mixture, though the recipe still expects it to be kneaded and rolled. Flour the board generously and handle it as little as the recipe says; overworking is what makes griddle scones tough and leathery.
- Rolling and cuttingFour pieces, each rolled out and cut into four, gives the sixteen scones the recipe promises. The recipe does not specify the shape; cutting a round into quarters would give the farls still sold in Scotland and Ulster. No thickness or diameter is given.
- The egg-white washBeaten white brushed on a scone that goes onto a hot dry griddle will set dull rather than glossy, so expect a matte finish. It can be skipped without much loss.
- Griddle surfaceA dry cast-iron griddle or heavy skillet is right. Do not grease it — there is already plenty of fat in the dough, and added fat will fry the exterior before the crumb sets.
- Yield and servingSixteen small scones, best split and buttered within an hour of cooking. They stale fast; reheat briefly on the dry griddle rather than in a toaster.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and published by Procter & Gamble to sell Crisco, which reached the market in 1911 — which is why shortening appears here in a scone that a British cook of the same date would have made with butter or lard. The recipe itself is older than the fat in it: griddle or "girdle" scones are the Scottish original, cooked on a flat iron plate over the fire in households that had no oven, and the practice of rolling a round and cutting it into quarters gives the farls still sold in Scotland and Ulster. Baked oven scones, now the default everywhere, spread later with the domestic range. The addition of two whole eggs and cream marks this as a deliberately enriched, company version rather than the plain flour-and-buttermilk everyday sort.