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Dessert Biscuits
Whip half a pound of good fresh butter to a cream. If the weather be cold, place it beside the fire before commencing operations, but it should not oil. Stir in gradually one pound of flour and half a pound of sugar, then add the flavouring of lemon, ratafia, cinnamon, etc., and lastly, mix all together with the beaten yolks of half a dozen eggs. Butter a paper and lay it over a cake tin, drop some of the mixture on it at equal distances, so separating the biscuits that they may have space to spread, which they will do as soon as they get warm. See that the oven is not too hot, and that they do not get highly coloured. Time, twelve to eighteen minutes. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
A plain creamed-butter drop biscuit of the kind kept in a tin for the dessert course. The proportions are workable as written, but the method assumes a coal range and a cook who knows what "not too hot" means.
- The weights in modern terms8 oz (225 g) butter, 1 lb (450 g) flour, 8 oz (225 g) sugar and 6 egg yolks. Use plain flour and caster sugar; the dough is stiff and short, closer to a piped biscuit paste than a batter.
- Oven temperatureThe original says only "See that the oven is not too hot" and gives no figure; a moderate oven, somewhere in the region of 325-350F (160-175C), is the usual modern reading. These are meant to stay pale, so bake on the lower side and pull them when the edges have barely coloured.
- Butter that must not oilThe warning matters. Butter should be pliable at around 65F (18C) but still opaque; if it is allowed to melt to liquid the mixture tends to spread into thin greasy sheets rather than hold as mounds.
- RatafiaIn Victorian English cookery ratafia flavouring generally meant an almond, effectively bitter-almond, essence. Modern almond extract is the nearest equivalent, a scant teaspoon for this quantity; it is made either from synthetic benzaldehyde or from bitter almond and stone-fruit kernels.
- Buttered paperBaking parchment replaces this and needs no greasing. The paper used at the time was plain ungreased paper, which is why the recipe calls for it to be buttered.
- SpacingThey spread noticeably as the butter softens, so allow a good 2 inches between spoonfuls. A teaspoon of mixture gives a biscuit of roughly 2 inches finished.
- Yolks onlyNo whites and no raising agent means no lift; the texture is dense and sandy, like a shortbread. Do not expect a puffed or cakey result and do not be tempted to add baking powder, which would coarsen the crumb.
- Yield and keepingYield depends entirely on the size of the drops, and teaspoon-sized ones from this quantity of mixture will run to well over fifty. They crisp as they cool and keep for some time in an airtight tin, which is what they were made for.
Dessert biscuits were not a snack but a course: in nineteenth-century service the cloth came off and dessert followed, meaning fruit, nuts, ices, wine and small dry biscuits to eat with them. The formula is a template, hence the airy list of flavourings, lemon, ratafia or cinnamon, to be chosen at will. The proportions of two parts flour to one each of butter and sugar, bound with yolks, closely resemble what is often described as the standard English biscuit paste of the period, and much the same base seems to turn up under a variety of names depending on what was stirred into it. The costing of 1s. 6d. is a reminder of the book's readership: a household economical enough to want the price of a tin of biscuits, but with butter and half a dozen eggs to spare on them.