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Hanover Buns
Mix a large table-spoonful of fresh yeast with three table-spoonfuls of warm milk, add a quarter of a pound of fine flour, and leave it to rise. Beat six ounces of butter to a cream, add a pinch of salt, a table-spoonful of sugar, half a pound of flour, and the thin rind of a lemon minced as small as possible. Moisten this with the yolks of three and the white of one egg, add the yeast, etc., and beat it well with the hand until air-bubbles begin to rise. The dough should be of the usual consistency. Make it into small cakes, and set them on a buttered tin a little distance from each other. Put them in a warm place, and, when nicely risen, brush them over with beaten egg, and bake them in a good oven till brightly browned. Strew a little powdered sugar over them before serving. If fresh yeast cannot be obtained, three-quarters of an ounce of German yeast may be substituted for it. Time, about twenty minutes to bake. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for a dozen buns.
An enriched, butter-heavy yeast dough with almost no liquid beyond three spoonfuls of milk and the eggs — closer to a brioche than to a modern bun. A few notes before starting.
- The hinge: the dough is very stiffSix ounces of butter and three-quarters of a pound of flour are moistened by only three tablespoons of milk, three egg yolks and one egg white. Beating "with the hand until air-bubbles begin to rise" is the whole technique — it is a butter-and-egg emulsion beaten into flour, not a kneaded bread dough, and it wants five to ten minutes of vigorous work (a stand mixer with the paddle does it). If it will not come together at all, a further tablespoon of warm milk is fair; the original's "usual consistency" means soft enough to shape by hand but not slack.
- Yeast quantities"Fresh yeast" here is most likely brewer's barm, wetter and less predictable in strength than what we buy. The alternative given, three-quarters of an ounce of German (compressed) yeast, is about 21 g of modern fresh yeast — roughly 7 g of instant dried, or one standard sachet. Dried yeast can go straight into the sponge with the warm milk.
- Flour weightsA quarter pound of "fine flour" for the sponge is about 115 g; the half pound for the dough about 225 g. Plain white flour is right — strong bread flour makes these tough against so much butter.
- Lemon rind"The thin rind of a lemon minced as small as possible" is what we would grate as zest, taking none of the white pith. Rubbing the zest into the sugar with your fingers first spreads the oil through the dough.
- Oven temperatureA "good oven" for small enriched cakes is about 400°F/200°C. Twenty minutes is realistic for buns of this size; the egg wash and the sugar in the dough will brown them well before the centres are set if you go much hotter.
- Rising times, which the recipe omitsThe sponge needs 45 minutes to an hour in a warm place until domed and bubbling. The shaped buns want 30 to 45 minutes — the butter makes them sluggish. Proved properly they should look visibly puffed and feel airy, not merely spread.
- Egg wash and finishUse the leftover white or a whole beaten egg, applied lightly so it does not pool at the base and glue the buns to the tin. The powdered sugar is strewn after baking, once the buns have cooled a little, or it melts and disappears.
- Yield and costA dozen buns, as stated. "Probable cost, 1s." is a shilling in late-Victorian money, given so a housekeeper could price a tray against bought bakers' goods; it carries no useful modern equivalent.
Cassell's carries buns and cakes with German place-names, reflecting both the Hanoverian thread running through the British monarchy and, more practically, the very real German influence on nineteenth-century British baking. The tell here is the yeast itself: "German yeast" was the trade name for the compressed baker's yeast that came into Britain in quantity from continental distilleries from the 1870s onward, displacing the unreliable brewer's barm that bakers had depended on. A recipe that offers barm first and compressed yeast as the fallback is one written in the middle of that changeover. The dough, with its creamed butter, egg yolks and lemon peel, belongs to the family of German Hefeneb e