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Rolls, Fruit
Dissolve an ounce and a half of butter and half a tea-spoonful of salt in a pint of boiling milk, and half an ounce of yeast in a table-spoonful of warm water. When the milk is nearly cold, mix with it an egg, add the yeast, and three-quarters of a pound of flour. Cover it, and put it in a warm place to rise. When light, knead in half a pound more of flour, and let the dough rise again. Make the pastry into rings by rolling it out in pieces half an inch thick and half an inch wide. Pinch the ends together, lay the rings on buttered pans, let them rise before the fire for a few minutes, prick them again, and bake in a well-heated oven. Time to bake, twelve to fifteen minutes. These rolls are delicious served with stewed fruit and cream.
A plain enriched yeast dough shaped into rings — the fruit is what you serve alongside, not what goes in. The one thing to watch is the milk temperature: a pint of boiling milk will kill the yeast outright, so the instruction to wait until it is "nearly cold" is not optional.
- The yeastHalf an ounce is a weight, so fresh yeast rather than dried. Substitute about 2 teaspoons of active dry or 1½ teaspoons of instant yeast; with instant you can skip the tablespoon of warm water and add it with the first flour.
- Milk temperatureLet the scalded milk fall to about 100F before the egg and yeast go in. Warm to the fingertip, not hot.
- Flour quantitiesThree-quarters of a pound is roughly 2¾ cups, and the further half pound about 1¾ cups — around 4½ cups, 570 g, in total. Hold back some of the second addition.
- "A well-heated oven"Roughly 400–425F. At that heat twelve to fifteen minutes suits rings this slim.
- Rising timesThe book gives none. Expect 1 to 1½ hours for the first rise and 45 minutes to an hour for the second, both at ordinary room temperature — longer than the "few minutes" before the fire that the recipe allows for the shaped rings, which is only a final warming.
- ShapingHalf an inch thick and half an inch wide means ropes, not sheets of dough. Roll half-inch lengths, bring the ends round and pinch firmly, wetting the join so the ring does not spring open in the oven.
- "Prick them again"No earlier pricking is mentioned — apparently a slip in the text. Pricking each ring two or three times with a fork before baking keeps them from blistering.
- YieldAbout sixteen small rings. They are best the day they are baked; reheat briefly if kept.
The name is a serving instruction rather than a description: these are milk-and-egg rolls intended to be eaten with stewed fruit and cream, in the way a Victorian household might use a plain sweet bread to carry preserved plums or rhubarb at the end of a meal or at high tea. The half ounce of yeast, sold by weight rather than in packets, is a quantity a modern cook has to translate.