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Madeira Buns
Put into half a pound of flour rather more than a quarter of a pound of butter, add three ounces of sifted sugar, the grated rind of half a lemon, a small tea-spoonful of powdered ginger, half an ounce of caraway-seeds, a little nutmeg, and a pinch of salt; stir well together, and add two eggs well beaten, and half a wine-glassful of sherry. Bake quickly in patty-pans for about fifteen minutes. The above ingredients are sufficient for eight large buns. Probable cost, 8d.
A rich rubbed-in bun with no chemical leavening, so the eggs and a hot oven do all the lifting. The proportions are workable as written, but two of the flavourings are heavy-handed by current taste.
- Weights in metric and cupsHalf a pound of flour is 225 g, about 2 cups scooped and levelled. "Rather more than a quarter of a pound" of butter means roughly 120-125 g; 3 oz sifted sugar is 85 g, or a scant half cup of caster sugar.
- Half a wine-glassfulA Victorian wine glass held about 2 fl oz, so half is roughly 1 fl oz - 2 tablespoons, 30 ml - of sherry. That is the only liquid in the dough beyond the eggs, which is why the mixture should stay thick and dropping rather than pourable.
- The caraway is a full half-ounceHalf an ounce is about 15 g, or 2 tablespoons of seed across eight buns. That is a genuine seed-cake dose and tastes it. Two teaspoons gives the same character without the buns becoming aromatic to the point of medicinal.
- "Bake quickly"The book asks for speed rather than naming an oven; a quick oven was usually reckoned at around 400-425F (200-220C). Small buns in a hot oven for fifteen minutes is right; at a moderate 350F they will spread and dry out before they colour.
- Patty-pansThese are small shallow tartlet or bun tins, closer to a modern shallow muffin tin than a deep cupcake case. Grease them well - there is butter in the dough but no lining paper in the original.
- No baking powderThe recipe includes none, relying on well-beaten eggs and the hot oven, though chemical leavening was already available to cooks of the period. Beat the eggs until pale and frothy and get the buns into the oven promptly; the result is close-textured and short, more biscuit than sponge, and that is correct.
- Yield and costEight large buns, as stated. The "probable cost, 8d" is the book's costing for a late-Victorian household and is only useful now as a reminder that sherry, lemon and spice together were a modest indulgence rather than a luxury.
The name is a small trap: Madeira cake and Madeira buns are generally said to take their name not from an ingredient but from the wine they were meant to be eaten with, a glass of Madeira or sherry mid-morning or with afternoon callers. Cassell's version leans on the same flavour family that ran through nineteenth-century British baking - lemon rind, nutmeg, ginger and above all caraway, the seed that gave seed cake its long Victorian reign before falling out of British favour in the twentieth century. The inclusion of sherry in the dough itself is a nice piece of circular logic, and the costing in pence is typical of the dictionary's practical mission: recipes priced so a cook or housekeeper could judge them against the week's allowance.