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Milan Biscuits
Into a pound and a half of flour rub four ounces of butter, and add four ounces of sifted sugar. Mix with two well-beaten eggs a wine-glassful of brandy, and moisten the whole with this. When the paste is thinly rolled, cut it into any fanciful shapes with tin cutters. Brush the biscuits lightly over with egg, and bake in a quick oven for ten minutes. Probable cost, 10d. per pound. Sufficient for two pounds and a half of biscuits.
A stiff, barely sweet brandy biscuit of the sort meant to be cut into shapes and kept in a tin. The one thing to watch is the liquid: two eggs and a wine-glass of brandy is very little moisture for a pound and a half of flour, and the dough will look impossibly dry before it comes together.
- The hinge: bring the paste together slowlyWork the liquid in gradually and knead briefly on the board rather than adding water at the first sign of crumbs. If it truly will not cohere, add cold brandy or milk a teaspoon at a time; too much and the biscuits spread and toughen.
- Weights in modern termsA pound and a half of flour is about 680g (roughly 5 1/2 cups); 4 oz butter is 115g, and 4 oz sifted sugar is also 115g. Sifted sugar here means fine caster sugar, not confectioners' sugar.
- A wine-glassfulIn Victorian and Edwardian cookery books this is conventionally taken as about 2 fl oz (60 ml), a quarter cup. Some sources stretch it to 2 1/2 fl oz, so the measure is genuinely approximate.
- A quick ovenUsually taken as somewhere around 400-450F (200-230C). At that heat ten minutes is right only for a thin biscuit; watch from eight minutes and pull them when the edges colour.
- Roll thinly means thinlyAbout 1/8 inch (3 mm). Thicker and the centre stays soft and the biscuit loses the dry snap that is the whole point of it.
- The egg washBeat a whole egg or just the yolk with a splash of water and apply sparingly with a brush; a heavy coat pools in the cut edges and bakes to a leathery skin.
- Yield and keepingTwo and a half pounds of biscuits, so upwards of five or six dozen small shapes. Cool completely and store airtight; they are dry enough to keep for a couple of weeks.
- Ignore the cost line"Probable cost, 10d. per pound" is pre-decimal British currency and served as a budgeting aid for the household cook.
"Milan biscuits" is one of a number of period biscuits and cakes carrying a foreign city name, and no Lombard original is attached to it here; the name would have signalled a fashionable Continental sweetmeat to an English reader. What the formula does show clearly is the period's category of the plain keeping biscuit: very little sugar, no chemical leavening, a spirit rather than milk for moisture, and a bake hot and short. Brandy in such doughs added flavour and, being alcohol rather than water, did less to develop the flour, which suited a paste meant to stay short and dry when biscuits were made in two-and-a-half-pound batches and stored in tins.