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Scones, Wheaten Meal
Mix together one pound of wheat-meal, one pound of flour, a tea-spoonful of baking-soda, the same of cream of tartar, a tea-spoonful of dripping, and half a tea-spoonful of salt. Add sufficient butter-milk to make a light dough; divide it into small portions, roll out to the thickness of a quarter of an inch, and bake on a hot (but not too hot) girdle. Probable cost, 6d.
A griddle scone, not an oven scone: the dough is rolled thin and baked dry on hot iron. Two points decide the result — the thickness and the heat of the plate.
- The girdleA girdle is a griddle: a flat iron plate hung over the fire, and the direct ancestor of the cast-iron griddle or heavy frying pan you already own. Use it dry, or wiped with the barest film of fat; these are baked, not fried.
- "Hot but not too hot"Medium heat on a domestic hob; perhaps 350-375F at the plate surface, though the original gives no figure and the judgement was made by eye. Test with a drop of water: it should sizzle away briskly rather than vanish instantly. Too fierce and the outside colours before the centre sets — which is exactly why the original hedges.
- A quarter of an inch means itThin dough is what lets a griddle cook a scone through without an oven. Roll to 6 mm, cut into rounds or quarters, and allow roughly 4-5 minutes a side; they should sound hollow and show no damp seam when broken.
- Wheat-mealWholemeal flour; period meal was likely coarser than a modern fine wholemeal, though the degree is guesswork. The half-and-half mix with white flour keeps the crumb light; all wholemeal gives a denser, drier scone.
- DrippingRendered beef or bacon fat, sold in most British supermarkets and easily saved from a roast. Butter or lard behaves the same way here; a single teaspoon in two pounds of flour is there for tenderness, not richness.
- Soda, cream of tartar and buttermilkThe buttermilk alone will activate the soda; the cream of tartar is belt and braces — soda plus cream of tartar amounts to a home-mixed baking powder, and the pairing is common in Victorian recipes. Mix and cook promptly — the lift begins the moment the liquid goes in and does not wait.
- How much buttermilk"Sufficient" is roughly 500-600 ml for two pounds of flour, depending on the meal. Aim for a soft, slightly tacky dough; a stiff one bakes into a biscuit.
- YieldTwo pounds of flour is a large batch — about 20 scones. Halve it for a household of two or three. They stale within the day and are best split and toasted thereafter.
- SixpenceThe cost is given for Victorian Britain and reflects how cheap this was: meal, buttermilk from the dairy, and a spoonful of saved fat.
Griddle baking predates the domestic oven in most British and Irish kitchens, and survived longest in Scotland, Wales and the north of England, where a girdle hung permanently over the hearth and bread was made in small flat cakes rather than loaves. The word scone is generally traced to Scots, and the griddle version — thin, quickly turned, eaten the same day — is usually taken to be the older form; the tall, oven-risen tea scone is a later development. The pairing of buttermilk with bicarbonate of soda is consistent with a nineteenth-century date: chemical raising agents became cheap and reliable only from the mid-1800s.