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Buttermilk Scones or Bread
To one pound of flour add one tea-spoonful of salt; mix fifty grains of carbonate of soda with a tea-spoonful of powdered sugar, and rub them into the flour. When they are well blended together, mix the flour into a stiff dough with some buttermilk--or milk will do--but no time should be lost in putting it into the oven, or the bread will be heavy. It requires a well-heated oven, but not a strong one. Time to bake, about three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, from 3d. to 4d. Sufficient for a small loaf.
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A plain soda bread with nothing in it but flour, salt, a pinch of sugar and buttermilk. The whole thing turns on speed: the acid in the buttermilk starts working on the soda the moment they meet, so the dough goes into a hot oven immediately or not at all.
- Fifty grains of sodaGrains are an apothecary weight: 50 grains is about 3.2 g, or a generous 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda. That is a workable proportion for 1 lb (about 3 1/2 cups) of flour with enough buttermilk to bring it together.
- Carbonate of sodaThis is ordinary bicarbonate of soda, sold as baking soda. Sift or rub it thoroughly through the flour with the sugar before any liquid touches it, or the loaf will bake with bitter yellow streaks.
- "Well-heated, but not a strong one"Set the oven to about 400F. Too fierce a heat would set the crust before the crumb has risen; a soda loaf wants steady heat that lets the gas expand right through.
- Buttermilk versus milkThe recipe needs acid to react with the soda. Modern cultured buttermilk works, as does thin plain yogurt let down with water. Fresh sweet milk, offered here as a substitute, gives almost no lift with soda alone — with plain milk, use baking powder instead, about 4 teaspoons to the pound of flour.
- Quantity of liquidNone is given, which is normal for the period. Reckon on roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups of buttermilk for a stiff, slightly tacky dough that just holds a shape. Handle it as little as possible.
- Scones or breadThe same dough does both. As a single small loaf, flatten to a round about 1 1/2 inches thick, cut a deep cross, and bake the stated 45 minutes. Cut into scones 3/4 inch thick, it is done in 12-15 minutes.
- Yield and eatingOne small loaf, about eight slices, or eight to ten scones. Soda bread stales fast — it is at its best within a few hours and is worth toasting on the second day.
- Probable costThree to four pence in late-Victorian money. The figure is here because Cassell's priced almost every recipe for readers running a household on a fixed weekly sum.
Buttermilk was for centuries a by-product rather than a purchase: what remained in the churn after butter was made, mildly sour and cheap or free on any farm. Its acidity reacted with bicarbonate of soda, which became widely available in British kitchens over the nineteenth century, to leaven bread in under an hour instead of the several hours yeast demanded. That combination is the foundation of Irish and Scottish soda breads and girdle scones, and its speed is why recipes like this one insist that "no time should be lost" — the gas is generated at once and escapes from a dough left standing.