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Buns
Break one egg into a cup and fill with sweet milk; mix with it half cup yeast, half cup butter, one cup sugar, enough flour to make a soft dough; flavor with nutmeg. Let rise till very light, then mold into biscuit with a few currants. Let rise a second time in pan; bake, and, when nearly done, glaze with a little molasses and milk. Use the same cup, no matter about the size, for each measure.-Mrs. W. A. James.
A proportional recipe built entirely on one cup, whatever cup happens to be at hand. The measurements work relative to each other, which is why Mrs. James adds her closing note.
- The cup is a ratio, not a volumeEverything is scaled to the same vessel, so the dough works whether the cup holds 6 ounces or 10. With a standard 8-ounce cup the flour will likely land somewhere around 4 to 5 cups, since the recipe only says "enough flour to make a soft dough," and the batch will make a dozen and a half or so buns depending on how large they are molded.
- Half cup yeastThis means liquid yeast — barm or a homemade potato or hop ferment — not anything sold today. Substitute about 2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry or instant yeast, and add roughly 1/2 cup of additional milk to replace the liquid the barm was contributing.
- Sweet milkFresh unsoured milk, specified because sour milk was equally common in the pantry and would call for soda. Ordinary whole milk is what you want.
- The egg-and-milk cupOne egg broken into the cup and the cup then filled with milk — so roughly 3 tablespoons of egg plus enough milk to reach the cup line, not an egg plus a full cup.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, the small black raisin, not fresh red or black currants. The recipe asks only for "a few," so a modest handful worked into the dough is closer to the instruction than a heavy studding; plumping them briefly in warm water keeps them from scorching.
- Mold into biscuitShape into round rolls about the size of a biscuit, two to two and a half inches across, and set them in the pan for the second rise.
- Rising timesWith modern yeast rather than barm, the first rise runs 1 1/2 to 2 hours and the second 45 minutes to an hour. "Very light" means doubled and visibly domed, not merely stirring.
- Oven and bakeThe recipe gives no temperature at all, only "bake"; 350 to 375F for 18 to 22 minutes suits buns of this size. The text says to glaze "when nearly done," so brush the molasses and milk on in the last few minutes; molasses darkens fast and will burn if it goes on at the start.
Buckeye Cookery collected recipes from Ohio housewives by name, and Mrs. James's proportional cup is a good illustration of how home baking was actually transmitted before standardized measuring cups became common kitchen equipment toward the end of the nineteenth century. A cook could carry the whole formula in her head — one egg-and-milk cup, half of yeast, half of butter, one of sugar — and reproduce it in any kitchen with any teacup. The half cup of yeast points to the same world: many households are thought to have kept a liquid ferment going, refreshed from a saved portion or borrowed from a neighbor, and dry yeast in a packet was not yet the default. Sweetened, spiced, currant-studded buns of this type descend from the enriched English tea bread tradition, and a molasses glaze is brushed on near the end.