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Lemon Rings
Beat four ounces of butter to a cream, add two beaten eggs separately. Mix in six ounces of sugar, one pound of flour, the grated rind of a lemon, a little milk, and a teaspoonful of baking powder. Make into a paste, roll it out to the thickness of about a quarter of an inch, divide it into rounds with a cutter or a glass, cut out the centres to form rings, and fry to a light brown in deep hot fat. Probable cost, 1s.
A stiff sweet paste fried as rings — a Victorian doughnut, leaner and less sweet than its modern descendant. The recipe assumes you know what a frying paste should feel like, so the milk is left unmeasured.
- The hinge: fat temperatureDeep fat should be 360-375F. Below that the rings drink fat and turn heavy; above it the outside browns before the centre of a quarter-inch paste sets. Fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash.
- "A little milk"Genuinely ambiguous. Add it a tablespoon at a time until the dough just coheres into a rollable paste, and stop while it is still firm. A soft dough will slump and absorb fat.
- Weights, not cups4 oz butter is one stick; 6 oz sugar is a little under a cup; 1 lb flour is roughly 3 1/2 cups measured lightly. Weigh the flour if you can — cup measures here can easily push the paste too dry.
- Baking powderOne teaspoon to a pound of flour is a modest lift by current standards, and Victorian baking powders varied more than ours. The rings read as short and biscuit-like rather than puffed; if you want them lighter, a second teaspoon is as far as it is worth going.
- Eggs "separately"This means beating in one egg at a time to keep the creamed butter from splitting, not separating yolks from whites.
- Cutting the ringsA 2 1/2-inch cutter with a 1-inch centre works well. Fry the cut-out centres alongside the rings — they cook in about half the time.
- Yield and finishingFinishing -- Drain on a rack rather than paper if you want them crisp, and toss in caster sugar while still warm; they are best the day they are made.
- Probable costOne shilling, from a period when the book priced dishes for a household budget. It is a note on economy, not a measurement.
This belongs to a familiar group of fried sweets: a creamed-butter paste, cut and dropped into deep fat, the same family as the cruller, the Dutch oliebol and the many British "fritters" that predate the ring doughnut proper. Lemon rind was a common aromatic of the late-Victorian sweet larder. The listed "probable cost" is characteristic of Cassell's, which was written for households keeping accounts and wanting to know before they began what a dish would take out of the week's money.