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American Velvet Breakfast Cakes
Put a pint of new milk on the fire; let it simmer a few minutes, but do not allow it to boil. Stir into it a piece of butter the size of a walnut. Add a little salt, and three spoonfuls of good yeast, with three well-beaten eggs. Mix with these sufficient flour, which will be about three pounds, to make a soft dough. Knead all well together, and put the mixture in a basin with a cloth over it, and stand in a warm place for two hours or more. Then make it up into small cakes, lay them quite near each other on a well-oiled tin, and bake in a quick oven. Time, quarter of an hour to bake. Probable cost, 1s. This will make about twenty-four cakes, and two are sufficient for each person.
A straightforward enriched yeast roll, written for a cook who was expected to judge dough by feel rather than by weight. Two numbers in the original need adjusting before you start.
- The flour figure is too highThe flour figure looks high -- A pint of milk plus three eggs is roughly 700g of liquid, and a soft dough will take rather less than three pounds of flour. Add flour by handfuls until the dough is soft and slightly tacky, and treat the stated weight as an upper bound rather than a target.
- Pint and spoonfulsCassell's is a London book, so the pint is 20 fl oz (about 570ml, or 2½ US cups). "Three spoonfuls" of yeast means tablespoons of liquid barm or a soft cake yeast; about 2 teaspoons of instant dried yeast or 15g fresh does the same work.
- Butter the size of a walnutRoughly 1 oz / 30g. The comparison was a common Victorian shorthand, though the quantity it stood for varied somewhat from book to book.
- Scald, then coolThe instruction to simmer without boiling is the old scalding step, once used to neutralise enzymes in raw milk. With pasteurised milk it is unnecessary, and if you do heat it you must let it drop to about 100F/38C before the yeast goes in or you will kill it.
- Add the eggs off the heatThree beaten eggs stirred into hot milk will scramble. Cool the milk first, then beat in eggs and yeast together.
- The riseTwo hours in a warm place is right for a barm-leavened dough of this richness; modern yeast in a warm kitchen may be doubled in 60 to 90 minutes. Judge by volume, not the clock.
- A quick oven425-450F / 220-230C. Fifteen minutes at that heat suits small cakes set close together on the tin, where the sides stay pale and soft and only the tops colour.
- YieldAbout two dozen small rolls, which the book reckons at two per person, so twelve breakfasts. They are best the day they are baked and stale quickly, as most low-sugar enriched doughs do.
Cassell's carried dishes labelled "American" in this period, at a point when British readers were curious about transatlantic breakfasts and the softer, quicker breads associated with them. "Velvet" here most likely describes the crumb rather than any particular regional recipe: milk, butter and egg in a lean roll dough give a fine, tender texture quite unlike a plain water-risen bread roll, and the cakes are set close on the tin deliberately so they steam each other soft at the sides. The three spoonfuls of "good yeast" are the tell of the period, probably brewer's barm in liquid form, though compressed German yeast was also in circulation by this date; the strength of such yeast varied enough that the instruction "two hours or more" had to be left open. The stated cost of a shilling for two dozen places this among the everyday middle-class breakfast breads rather than anything festive.