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Italian Roll
Mix together half a pound of fine flour and from four to five ounces of sifted sugar. Put into a clean saucepan half a pint of new milk and a quarter of a pound of fresh butter; bring it to the boiling point, and stir in gradually the flour and sugar. Beat well four fresh eggs, add them with the grated rind of a lemon, stirring until the mixture is thick like dough. Lay a piece of well-greased paper on a baking-sheet, spread the mixture on this about a quarter of an inch thick. Bake till half done in the oven, spread jam on the paste, and bake again. Serve cold, whole or in slices of nearly an inch thick. Time, twenty to twenty-five minutes to bake. Probable cost, 1s. 2d., exclusive of jam.
This is a cooked paste in the choux family — milk and butter brought to the boil, flour beaten in, eggs added — but sweetened and baked flat rather than piped. The original gives a time but no temperature, and no clue about the roll implied by its name.
- Weights and volumesHalf a pound of flour is about 225 g (a scant 2 cups); four to five ounces of sugar is 115–140 g. Half a pint is an imperial half-pint, 10 fl oz or 1¼ US cups, and a quarter pound of butter is 115 g.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A batter of this kind wants a moderate oven, 350°F/175°C, for the twenty to twenty-five minutes stated — hot enough to set and colour the sheet without drying it to a board before the jam goes on.
- New milk"New milk" is simply fresh whole milk, as opposed to skimmed or the day-old milk a Victorian household might have on hand. Use whole milk.
- The hinge: cool before the eggsBeat the flour and sugar into the boiling milk and butter until the paste leaves the sides of the pan, then let it cool for several minutes before the eggs go in. Added to a near-boiling paste they scramble, and the mixture will be grainy rather than smooth and thick "like dough."
- Greased paperBaking parchment replaces the well-greased paper and needs no greasing. Spread the paste a scant quarter-inch (6 mm) thick — it puffs considerably, so leave a margin at the edges of the sheet.
- Half done"Half done" means set on top and just beginning to colour, roughly ten to twelve minutes. Spread the jam thinly at that stage and return it to finish; a thick layer will boil over the edges.
- The rollThe recipe as printed never says to roll it, only to serve it whole or in thick slices. If you want the roll the title promises, turn the sheet out, spread the jam, and roll it while still warm and flexible — once cold it cracks.
- Yield and servingA half-pound of flour makes a large sheet; how many slices it gives depends on the tray it is spread over and how thinly. It is served cold, and is best on the day it is made; the paste stales quickly.
- The cost lineOne shilling and twopence was the estimate for the whole quantity, exclusive of jam, in Victorian money; costs of this kind were printed with each entry so a dish could be priced against the housekeeping allowance.
The paste here is made in the manner of a boiled flour-and-butter panada, the method behind pâte à choux, though the proportions are stiffer than a true choux — eight ounces of flour to four ounces of butter and only four eggs — and it is sweetened with sugar and lemon rind and baked in a sheet rather than piped. The "Italian" in the name is best read as a period flourish rather than a claim of origin: national labels such as Italian, Vienna and Genoese were attached to sweet baked goods loosely in nineteenth-century English cookery writing. The "probable cost" line is characteristic of Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, an alphabetical compilation of several thousand entries each carrying a costing.