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RUSKS (another way) (Take four eggs half a pint)
Take four eggs, half a pint each of new milk and warm water, a quarter of a pound of melted-butter, a quarter of a pound of sugar, and three table-spoonfuls of yeast. Beat these ingredients together with as much flour, added gradually, as will make a very light paste. Let it rise for half an hour before the fire, then add a little more flour, and form into small cakes or loaves five or six inches wide; flatten the cakes, bake them moderately, and when cold cut them into slices the size of rusks, and put them into the oven to brown a little. This is a nice tea-cake to eat hot, or, with caraways, to eat cold.
An enriched yeast dough baked as small flat cakes, then sliced and dried a second time — the same two-stage method behind biscotti and Zwieback. The flour is not measured, so judge by feel.
- The liquid measuresThese are imperial half-pints: 10 fl oz, or about 1 1/4 US cups each of milk and warm water. That is a lot of liquid, so expect to add flour generously — somewhere around 5 to 6 cups (700-850 g) for a soft, slack dough that just holds a shape.
- Butter and sugar by weightA quarter pound each is about 115 g butter (one US stick) and roughly 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon of sugar. Victorian cookery books often use "melted butter" to mean a flour-thickened butter sauce; here the fact that it is given by weight points to plain melted butter. Let it cool to lukewarm before it meets the yeast.
- Three tablespoonfuls of yeastMeasuring yeast by the spoonful suggests liquid barm or brewer's yeast, generally weaker and less predictable than what is sold today. Substitute about 2 teaspoons of instant dried yeast, or one 7 g sachet, and reduce nothing else.
- The rise is too shortHalf an hour before the fire suited a warm hearth and a lively barm. With modern yeast in a modern kitchen, give the dough an hour to ninety minutes until doubled, then a further 20 to 30 minutes after shaping.
- Oven temperatures"Bake them moderately" is conventionally read as about 350F (175C) — roughly 20 to 25 minutes for cakes five or six inches across, until pale gold and hollow-sounding. The second baking is a drying rather than a bake: something in the region of 250-300F (120-150C) for 20 to 40 minutes, turning the slices once.
- Cool completely before slicingThis is the hinge. Warm dough tears and crumbles under the knife; cold cakes cut into clean slices about 1/2 inch thick. A serrated blade helps.
- CarawaysCaraway seeds, about a teaspoon or two worked into the dough at the second flouring. Victorian seed cakes leaned on them heavily; start light if the flavour is unfamiliar.
- Yield and keepingRoughly six cakes, giving 40 to 50 rusks. Dried through and kept in a tin they last for weeks; any softness means they went back into the oven too briefly.
Rusks are twice-baked bread, and the technique is older than any of its names — bake, slice, dry, and you have something that keeps on a ship, in a barracks or in a nursery cupboard. The English word is of obscure origin, but is usually traced to Spanish or Portuguese rosca, a twisted or coiled loaf. By the eighteenth century "rusk" in Britain could mean a sweetened, enriched slice as well as plainer ship's bread. This recipe belongs with the tea-cakes by its own description, and dried rusks were commonly given to invalids and to teething infants as well as served at table. The recipe's double life — "a nice tea-cake to eat hot, or, with caraways, to eat cold" — suits a kitchen with no refrigeration and a strong dislike of waste.