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Fruit Biscuits
Make a paste as follows; mix thoroughly the yolks of two eggs, and four ounces of sugar. When smooth add four ounces of flour, one egg, and a little salt, and last of all, the two whites of eggs, whisked till firm. Spread the paste on a lined baking-tin; it should be rather less than an inch thick. Bake in a moderate oven, and when cool cut into fingers. Rub a cupful of strawberries or raspberries through a fine sieve, and mix with the pulp castor sugar to make a stiff paste. Spread this upon the biscuits, and dry in a cool oven.
This is a plain sponge batter baked as a slab, cut into fingers, and finished with an uncooked fruit-and-sugar paste dried in the oven's falling heat. The whipped whites are the only leavening, so how you fold them in decides whether the slab rises or sits flat.
- Fold, don't stirThere is no baking powder here. Beat the yolks and sugar until pale, work in the flour, salt and whole egg, then fold the firm whites in with a spatula in two or three additions. Overmixing at this stage gives a dense, leathery slab.
- Weights in cupsFour ounces of sugar is a scant two-thirds cup; four ounces of flour is close to a full cup by modern measure. Weighing is more reliable than cups for a batter this small, where a heavy hand with the flour is immediately obvious.
- Moderate oven350F. The slab is under an inch thick and will be set and lightly coloured in 15 to 20 minutes; a skewer in the centre should come out clean.
- "Lined baking-tin"A shallow tin lined with parchment is the modern equivalent. This is a small quantity of batter, so use a tin no bigger than about eight inches square if the slab is to come out at the thickness specified — rather less than an inch. Spread it level with a palette knife.
- Cut coldWait until the slab is completely cool before cutting into fingers, and use a long thin knife. Warm sponge tears and compresses under the blade.
- Castor sugarSuperfine or caster sugar, which dissolves into the raw fruit pulp without grittiness. Granulated will stay sandy; if it is all you have, pulse it briefly in a spice grinder.
- The fruit pasteA cupful of sieved strawberries or raspberries takes a surprising quantity of sugar before it holds its shape — work it in a spoonful at a time until the pulp mounds on the spoon rather than slumping. The sugar is doing the setting; there is no added pectin or gelatine.
- "A cool oven"Around 200 to 225F, or the residual heat of an oven switched off, with the door propped. The point is to dry the surface of the fruit paste to a firm glaze, not to bake it further.
- Yield and keepingThe slab gives roughly 16 to 20 fingers. The fruit topping is uncooked and only lightly dried, so these are at their best the day they are made and should be refrigerated after that — they will not keep like a plain biscuit.
"Biscuit" in a British book of this period covers a wide field, and here it means the sponge-biscuit tradition — the same egg-sugar-flour batter behind sponge fingers, boudoir biscuits and the ladyfinger, baked as a sheet and cut rather than piped. Whisked whites are the only raising agent in this mixture, as in other sponges of the period. The uncooked fruit paste is an economical relation of the fruit "cheeses" and stiff conserves made when soft fruit gluts arrived, and drying it in a cooling oven suits a kitchen where the range stayed warm for hours after the day's baking.