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Bread Cakes, Fried, American
To five tea-cupfuls of light dough add half a cupful of butter, three of brown sugar, a tea-spoonful of salt, four eggs, and a little grated nutmeg. Knead these well together with flour, and let them rise before the fire until very light. Knead the dough again after it rises; cut it into diamond-shaped cakes; let them rise; and fry in lard or dripping, as soon as light. These cakes must be served as soon as they are ready.
This is an enriched, twice-risen fried bread dough — essentially a raised doughnut cut in diamonds rather than rings. The instructions assume you already have bread dough working in the kitchen.
- "Light dough"This means ordinary risen bread dough taken at its peak, before the second shaping. The period teacup is reckoned anywhere from half a cup to three-quarters, and the measure is genuinely inconsistent from book to book, so any weight given for five teacupfuls of risen dough is an estimate rather than a conversion; go by feel.
- The hinge: proof after cuttingEverything depends on the shaped diamonds being fully light when they hit the fat. Under-proofed pieces come out dense and greasy at the centre; the book says "as soon as light" for a reason.
- Enriched dough proofs slowlyButter, eggs and a large quantity of sugar all slow yeast down. "Rise before the fire" means simply a warm spot near the hearth, and this dough may need an hour or more at each stage rather than the 30-40 minutes a lean dough takes.
- Frying fat and temperatureLard or beef dripping both work and give the period flavour; any neutral fat with a high smoke point will do. Hold 360-375F. Below that the cakes soak; above it the sugar in the dough scorches before the crumb sets.
- SweetnessThree cups of brown sugar to five of dough is far sweeter than a modern raised doughnut, and the sugar also softens the dough considerably. Expect to work in a good deal of flour at the kneading stage, as the recipe indicates.
- NutmegFreshly grated is worth the trouble here; pre-ground nutmeg loses most of its aroma and this is the only spice in the formula.
- Serving and yieldPerhaps a couple of dozen cakes, depending on how large you cut the diamonds. The instruction to serve them at once is not politeness — raised fried dough stales quickly.
The title files this among American breads, and the label matters: fried raised dough of this kind was known in Dutch-descended and New England kitchens before the ring doughnut was standardised, and British compilers of the later nineteenth century did collect such American recipes. The diamond or lozenge shape is cut with a knife rather than a cutter. The recipe's assumption that a cook has spare risen bread dough on hand is itself a period marker — in a house baking its own bread, cakes like these were a way of turning a cupful of dough into something for the breakfast table, which is also why sweet fried dough often appears in old books under bread rather than confectionery.