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Rusks
No. 1.--Put two pounds of flour into a bowl, and mix with it a pinch of salt and six ounces of powdered sugar (if the rusks are intended for cheese the sugar should be omitted). Dissolve four ounces of butter in half a pint of hot milk. Add six well-beaten eggs, and two table-spoonfuls of yeast, and with this liquor work the flour into a smooth dough. Cover with a cloth, and set it in a warm place to rise. When light knead it, and divide into small cakes the size of an orange. Lay these closely together in a buttered pan, and bake in a brisk oven. When done enough, take them out, break them in halves, and place them again in the oven to get crisp on the other side. When cold keep them closely packed in tin canisters. Time to bake, altogether about half an hour. No. 2.--Warm half a pint of milk, and stir into it two table-spoonfuls of good yeast. Put a pound of flour into a bowl, and mix with it a pinch of salt and three table-spoonfuls of powdered sugar. Make a hollow in the flour, but not so deep as to lay bare the bottom of the bowl, and stir in the yeast and milk to make a thin batter. Shred a quarter of a pound of butter into the flour, cover the bowl, and leave it in a warm place until the batter rises in bubbles. Work all lightly together until the dough no longer sticks to the hand, then let it rise again until the surface cracks. Divide the paste into rolls six inches long and two broad, lay these side by side on a buttered tin, and set them before the fire for a few minutes to rise. Bake in a quick oven. When done enough, tear them into halves, and put them again into the oven till they are crisp. A table-spoonful of aniseed may be worked into the rusks if liked, and they will then be good for infants' food. No. 3.--Stir two ounces of butter in half a pint of warm milk until dissolved, add a table-spoonful of yeast and two well-beaten eggs. Put a pound of flour into a bowl, and mix with it a heaped table-spoonful of powdered sugar. Make a hole in the centre, pour in the eggs and milk, and beat in as much flour from the side as will make a thin batter. Sprinkle a little flour over this, cover the bowl with a cloth, and leave the preparation to rise until the bubbles show themselves through the flour; this will be in about an hour. Knead the whole into a firm dough, divide it into small cakes a little larger than an egg, and let these rise on the baking-tins for another hour. Bake the cakes in a moderate oven, and when cool put them in a warm screen to dry for half an hour. Store in tins in a dry place. Time to bake, about twenty minutes.
Three versions of the same enriched twice-baked bread, ranging from rich (No. 1, six eggs) to plain (No. 2, none). The hinge in all three is the second bake: the cakes must be split while still hot and returned cut-side up until dry through, or they will soften in the tin within a day.
- Powdered sugarIn a British book of this date this means fine granulated or caster sugar, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornflour. Caster sugar is the closest match.
- Imperial measuresHalf a pint here is 10 fl oz, not the American 8. Two pounds of flour is about 7 cups; a pound about 3 1/2 cups.
- The yeast"Two table-spoonfuls of yeast" probably means liquid barm, wetter and less predictable than anything sold today, though compressed yeast was also available by this date. As a starting point use about 2 1/4 tsp instant dried yeast for the 2 lb of flour in No. 1 and about 1 1/2 tsp per pound in Nos. 2 and 3, and judge by the dough rather than the clock.
- Oven heatA brisk or quick oven is usually reckoned at roughly 400-450F, a moderate oven at about 350F. The crisping stage wants far less: 250-275F, with the door propped, until the cut faces are dry and pale gold.
- The "warm screen"A wooden or metal screen set before the kitchen fire to finish drying baked goods. A low oven at 250F for the half hour does the same job.
- Baking closely togetherNo. 1 and No. 2 both crowd the pieces so they touch and rise upward rather than spreading. Keep about a finger's width between them; they should knit as they prove.
- Tearing versus cuttingBreaking or tearing rather than slicing may well be deliberate: a torn face has more surface and is likely to crisp drier than a knife-cut one.
- Aniseed rusksA tablespoon of whole aniseed is a lot by modern taste; two teaspoons, lightly bruised, is plenty. Ignore the note about infant food and treat these as a teabread.
- Yield and keepingThe count depends entirely on how large the pieces are made; No. 1's dough is roughly twice the bulk of Nos. 2 and 3, and No. 3's cakes are the smallest of the three. Properly dried and stored airtight they keep for weeks, but any softness means they went into the tin too damp.
Rusk is generally traced to the Spanish or Portuguese rosca, a coil or twist of bread, and by the eighteenth century meant what it means here: bread baked once, split, and baked again until it will keep. Twice-baked bread is one of the oldest solutions to the problem of storage, the same idea behind ship's biscuit, Italian biscotti and German zwieback. The recommendation of aniseed rusks for infants reflects a genuine Victorian practice: hard rusks were given to teething children and softened in milk or broth for weaning, and commercially baked baby rusks were sold on that basis well into the twentieth century. The parenthesis in No. 1, that the sugar be left out if the rusks are for cheese, is a reminder that the same dough served both the nursery and the supper table.