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Cinnamon Biscuits
Whisk six eggs with half a pound of sifted sugar, a quarter of an ounce of powdered cinnamon, and a wine-glassful of rose or orange-flower water. Work in gradually about half a pound of flour, to form a paste. Roll this out thin, cut it into little cakes in fancy shapes, and bake them on a buttered tin in a moderate oven for about twenty minutes, when they will be lightly browned. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for an ordinary dessert-dish.
A lean egg-and-sugar sponge biscuit with no butter and no raising agent — the lift comes entirely from the whisked eggs, which makes the handling of the batter the whole job.
- Whisk the eggs properlyWith no baking powder and no fat, the only aeration is the air you beat into the eggs and sugar. Whisk until the mixture is pale, thick, and falls from the whisk in a ribbon that holds a moment on the surface, then fold the flour in rather than stirring it.
- The weightsHalf a pound of sugar is about 1 1/8 cups; half a pound of flour is about 1 3/4 cups. A quarter of an ounce of powdered cinnamon is roughly 7 g, a generous tablespoon — assertive but not a misprint.
- A wine-glassfulIn Victorian cookery books this is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, a quarter cup. That is a great deal of modern rose or orange-flower water; commercial waters today are often more concentrated than the household distillations of the period, so start with a tablespoon.
- Flour "about half a pound"The quantity is left approximate, probably because six eggs vary in size. Six modern large eggs are likely to give a batter too slack to roll; expect to work in more flour, or pipe or drop the mixture in rounds instead of rolling and cutting.
- A moderate ovenUsually taken as around 350F, though the book gives no temperature. Line the tin with parchment as well as buttering it — this batter is high in sugar and sticks hard once cooled.
- Twenty minutes is longThin cut shapes at 350F will be lightly browned at the edges in 10 to 12 minutes. Twenty suits thicker biscuits, or a cooler oven left to dry them out; check early and pull them when the edges colour and the centres are just set.
- YieldThe batch should give something like three to four dozen small biscuits, depending on cutter; "sufficient for an ordinary dessert-dish" gives no exact count. They keep well in a tin and crisp further on standing.
Cassell's places this among a family of dry, fat-free sponge biscuits — Naples biscuits, savoy biscuits, ratafias — that a Victorian household kept in a tin to serve with wine, ices, custards and jellies. The flavouring is the older English one: rose and orange-flower water were the standard sweet perfumes of the still-room long before vanilla extract became cheap and general. The costing of one shilling and the phrase "sufficient for an ordinary dessert-dish" are typical of Cassell's method throughout: the book was written for a mistress budgeting a household and for the cook who had to fill a set number of dishes at the close of dinner.