Rusk
Two teacupfuls of raised bread dough, one tea-cup of sugar, one-half a cup of butter, two well beaten eggs, and flour enough to make a stiff dough; set it to rise and when light, mould into high biscuits and let it rise again. Sift sugar over the top, and (cinnamon if liked) and bake.
This is a sweet enriched roll built on a piece of ordinary bread dough — an economical trick from a time when a batch of bread was in progress most days. The recipe assumes you already know how yeast dough behaves, and it tells you nothing about temperature or timing.
- The teacupA nineteenth-century teacup is smaller than a modern mug; it is usually reckoned at about 6 fl oz, so two teacupfuls of dough is roughly 1 1/2 cups and a teacup of sugar about 3/4 cup. The half cup of butter is 4 oz, one modern stick.
- Raised bread doughThis means dough taken from a bread batch that has already risen. It supplies all the leavening — there is no additional yeast, so the dough must be lively when you take it, not slack and spent.
- Flour enoughExpect to work in perhaps 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 cups. Sugar, butter and eggs slacken and slow the dough; the original calls for a stiff dough, though a softer, smooth, slightly tacky dough will bake lighter.
- Set it to riseThe enriched dough will be sluggish, since sugar and fat slow yeast activity. Allow roughly 1 1/2 to 2 hours for the first rise at room temperature and 45 minutes to an hour for the shaped rolls.
- High biscuitsHere "biscuit" means a roll. Shape into tall balls about 2 1/2 inches across and set them close together in a pan so they support each other and rise upward rather than spreading.
- OvenThe original gives none. Bake at about 375F for 18 to 25 minutes, until the tops are deep gold and the centres read about 190F. The sugar on top will darken quickly and can scorch in a hot oven.
- The sugar topSift the sugar on just before baking, after the final rise, and press it lightly so it stays put. Coarse sugar holds its shape; superfine dissolves into a glaze. Cinnamon, if used, is best mixed into the sugar beforehand.
- YieldAbout a dozen rolls. They are best the day they are made; the following day, split and toast them, which is closer to what "rusk" originally meant.
Rusk began as twice-baked bread — dried hard in a slow oven so it would keep for months at sea or on the road, the same idea behind ship's biscuit and Dutch beschuit. By the time American household books of the later nineteenth century were printed, the word had drifted: rusk in these pages is usually a sweet, egg-and-butter-enriched roll, sometimes dried a second time and sometimes not, eaten fresh at tea or supper. The method here — begging a piece of dough from the day's bread batch and enriching it — was one way of working in a kitchen that kept its own yeast going, though compressed yeast could also be bought by this period, and it survives in the same logic that turns bread dough into cinnamon rolls today.