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Scotch Cake
Beat three-quarters of a pound of butter to cream, add a pound of powdered and sifted sugar, one pound of dried flour, one table-spoonful of powdered cinnamon, and a quarter of a pint of milk. Roll out the dough to the thickness of the third of an inch, cut it into cakes, and bake these in a well-heated oven. When the cakes are lightly and equally coloured they are done enough. Time to bake, about half an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 10d. for this quantity.
A rolled sugar-and-butter biscuit with no eggs and no raising agent — closer to a spiced shortbread than to anything a modern cook would call cake. The proportions are unusual and the baking time in the original will not suit a thin biscuit.
- Chill before rollingWith three-quarters of a pound of creamed butter, a pound of sugar and only a pound of flour, the dough is soft and greasy at room temperature. Rest it in the refrigerator for an hour, then roll between sheets of baking paper; it firms up and stops tearing.
- "Powdered sugar" is not confectioners' sugarIn Victorian usage it means loaf sugar crushed and sifted fine — caster sugar is the closest modern equivalent. Modern powdered sugar contains cornstarch and will give a chalkier, drier biscuit.
- "Dried flour"Flour was warmed by the fire or in a cooling oven to drive off damp before baking. Bagged flour today is dry enough; skip the step and simply sift.
- A quarter of a pint of milkFive fluid ounces by British measure, a little over half a cup. Add it gradually — depending on your flour you may not need all of it to bring the dough together.
- Oven and timeA "well-heated oven" is a brisk one, but the book gives no temperature, and half an hour at a brisk heat will scorch a third-inch biscuit. Bake at 350F and start checking at 12 minutes; the thirty minutes in the original suits a much thicker cake or a slower brick oven.
- Judging donenessThe instruction to bake until "lightly and equally coloured" is the real test. These are pale biscuits — pull them when the edges have just taken colour, as the high sugar content turns bitter quickly once browning starts.
- CoolingThey are fragile straight from the oven and set as they cool. Leave them on the sheet for five minutes before moving them to a rack.
- YieldRoughly forty biscuits at two and a half inches across, depending on how thin you roll and how much of the milk you use. They keep well in a tin.
"Scotch cake" in nineteenth-century English cookery books is a loose label, covering everything from a fruited yeast bread to plain rolled biscuits of this kind. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery was a household reference rather than a regional collection, and recipes like this one were gathered up under national names with only a rough claim to origin. The costing of 1s. 10d. is a reminder of what the book was for: a middle-class housekeeper working to a budget could see at a glance what a batch would take out of the week's money, at a time when butter and refined sugar together made this a comfortable rather than economical bake.