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Butter Scones
Take a pint of thin cream, salt it to taste, and stir it into flour enough to make a dough of the proper consistency. Knead well, roll out thin, and form into scones; prick them with a fork, and bake over a clear fire on a griddle. Butter should be served with them; they are excellent for breakfast or tea.
A griddle scone in the Scottish sense: no leavening, no oven, just cream and flour cooked on a hot plate. The dough is the whole recipe, so the two things that matter are how much flour you stop at and how hot the griddle is.
- "A pint of thin cream"Cassell's is working in imperial measure, so a pint is 20 fl oz, or 2.5 US cups. "Thin cream" is what is now sold as single or light cream, roughly 18 per cent fat; heavy cream will make the dough greasy and slack.
- "Flour enough"Expect somewhere in the region of 4 to 5 cups of plain flour for that quantity of cream, but the amount genuinely depends on the cream and the flour, which is why the book will not commit. Add it in stages and stop at a soft dough that just holds together without sticking.
- No raising agentThere is no soda, cream of tartar or baking powder here, and none is implied. These are flat, close-textured griddle scones rather than the risen wedges most people picture; the pricking is to stop them blistering and doming, not to vent a leavened dough.
- Rolled thinAbout 1/4 inch is right. Anything thicker will scorch on the griddle before the middle sets, since there is no oven heat to carry it through.
- Griddle heat"A clear fire" means glowing coals with no smoke or flame. On a modern hob, a heavy cast-iron griddle or dry frying pan over medium heat, around 350-375F, gives 4 to 5 minutes a side, turning once when the underside is freckled brown.
- KneadingKnead only enough to bring the dough smooth, half a minute or so; overworked scones go tough and leathery on a griddle. The instruction to "knead well" asks for more handling than modern scone practice would.
- YieldA large batch; the exact count depends on how thin you roll and how big you cut. They are meant to be eaten warm, split and buttered at the table, and they stale within hours.
The griddle, or girdle, scone predates the oven-baked kind in Scottish and northern English kitchens by a long way, for the plain reason that a flat iron plate hung over the fire was universal while a reliable domestic oven was not. This is among the plainest of the breakfast breads: cream supplies both the fat and the liquid, so there is no rubbing-in and no need for butter in the dough itself, which is instead handed round at table. The name is slightly misleading to modern eyes; the butter is the accompaniment, not an ingredient.