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German Cakes
Beat three-quarters of a pound of butter to a cream. Mix with it one pound and a half of sugar, four eggs--well beaten--two pounds of fine flour, half a nutmeg grated, one pound of dried and picked currants, and half a wine-glassful of rose-water. When all these ingredients are well-blended, roll the dough into sheets about the eighth of an inch in thickness, stamp them in rounds with the top of a tea-cup, and bake in a quick oven. Time, to bake ten or fifteen minutes. Probable cost, 1s. 10d.
A stiff, rich rolled biscuit dough with no leavening at all — the texture comes entirely from creaming the butter and from rolling thin. A few of the terms and quantities need translating before you start.
- Scale of the batchThe listed weights alone come to over five pounds before the eggs, so this is a very large batch: rolled to an eighth of an inch and cut with a teacup (about 2½–3 in across) it will yield many dozens of thin biscuits. Halving or quartering the recipe is entirely reasonable.
- "A quick oven"Conventionally read as somewhere around 400–425F. At that heat, thin biscuits will be done well before the stated ten to fifteen minutes — watch for the edges colouring and check at six or seven.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, the small black raisin, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. "Picked" means going through them for stalks and grit, which modern packaged fruit rarely needs. A pound is a great deal of fruit in a rolled dough; chopping them roughly makes the sheets easier to roll thin without tearing.
- Half a wine-glassful of rose-waterA Victorian wine glass is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so half of one is roughly 1 fl oz, about two tablespoons. Modern culinary rosewater varies enormously in strength — start with less if yours is concentrated and taste the raw dough.
- Fine flourPlain white flour. Nothing here is self-raising, and there is no soda or baking powder in the list; the biscuits are meant to be dense and short rather than risen.
- NutmegHalf a whole nutmeg, freshly grated, is about one to one and a half teaspoons of ground — assertive but correct for this style. Pre-ground nutmeg that has sat in a cupboard will contribute very little.
- Handling the doughWith this much sugar and no liquid beyond eggs and rosewater, the dough is crumbly warm and hard cold. Chill it, then roll between sheets of paper and let it come back slightly before cutting, or it will crack at the edges.
- Probable cost1s. 10d. — one shilling and tenpence, the book's estimate for the whole batch.
Cassell's uses "German" loosely here: the label is attached to rolled, spiced, keeping biscuits rather than to any single named original. The flavouring is the tell — rose-water and nutmeg belong to an older English sweet-baking vocabulary reaching back through the eighteenth century, and were giving way to vanilla and lemon essence as manufactured extracts became cheaper. Currants of this kind came largely from the Ionian islands, Zante (Zakynthos) among them; the word "currant" itself derives from the raisins of Corinth. The stamped teacup rounds suggest a kitchen without a set of graded cutters.