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Queen's Tea Cakes
Take the weight of two eggs in fresh butter and beat it to a cream. Mix with it half a pound of powdered and sifted sugar, which, before being crushed, has been rubbed upon the rind of a large lemon until the yellow part has been taken off, half a pound of dried flour, and a pinch of salt. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly, and make them into a paste by mixing with them the two eggs well beaten, and a little rose-water, or, failing this, cold water. Roll the paste out to the thickness of half an inch. Cut it out in rounds the size of a saucer, and bake in a moderate oven for from a quarter to half an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 3d. for this quantity.
A plain sugar biscuit built on the old practice of weighing ingredients against the eggs. The dough is very short and very sweet, with no leavening at all, so handling and thickness decide the result.
- The weight of two eggs in butterTwo eggs in the shell come to roughly 3.5-4 oz (100-115 g) depending on size, and that is the butter. Weigh your own eggs rather than guessing, since the whole balance of the dough hangs on it.
- Half a pound8 oz, or about 225 g, of sugar and the same of flour. Note that sugar equals flour by weight here, which gives a sandy, crisp, distinctly sweet biscuit rather than a soft cake.
- Dried flourVictorian kitchens warmed flour by the fire to drive off damp from cold larders. Modern bagged flour needs nothing; use it as it is.
- Powdered and sifted sugarThis means sugar crushed fine from a loaf, closest to today's caster sugar. Icing sugar contains starch and will make the cakes chalky.
- The lemon rubbingRubbing the lemon with a lump or block of sugar pulls the peel oils straight into the sugar, which carries far more flavour than dry zest. If you have no loaf sugar, rub the whole lemon hard with granulated sugar in a bowl, then grind or blitz it fine.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperature; 'moderate' is usually taken as somewhere around 325-350F (160-180C). Half an hour at the upper end will brown these heavily; check at 15 minutes and pull them when the edges are just gold and the centres set.
- Saucer-sized roundsA Victorian tea saucer was about 5 inches across. Half an inch thick at that width makes a large, thick biscuit; cutting 2 to 3 inch rounds is easier to bake evenly and gives roughly 20 cakes from the batch.
- Rose-waterStill sold, and used sparingly: a teaspoon or two is enough to bind and perfume. Modern rose waters vary greatly in strength, so add it a little at a time. Plain cold water is the stated substitute.
- HandlingWith this much sugar the dough softens fast. Chill it before rolling, and rest the cut rounds cold on the tray so they hold their shape.
Cassell's compilers were writing for households that owned a balance scale before they owned measuring cups, and "the weight of two eggs in butter" belongs to the same tradition as pound cake, where the eggs set the scale for everything else. The name places these among the queen cakes and queen's biscuits that filled English tea tables through the nineteenth century, small rich cakes whose regal names were largely a matter of flattering fashion rather than any documented royal connection. The rose-water is the older note in the recipe: distilled flower waters were the standard sweet flavouring of English baking for centuries and were being pushed aside, by the time this book appeared, in favour of lemon and vanilla, which may well explain why Cassell's offers lemon rind in the sugar and treats the rose-water as optional. The costing in shillings and pence was a fixed feature of the book, meant for a mistress budgeting a week's baking.